An adventurous Oakland couple who had been out of contact with family members for a month -  and believed to be missing - were heard from on Tuesday in Peru, much to the relief of their families and global social media community rallying for their safe return.

Garrett Hand and Jamie Neal, both 25, were aboard a small vessel on the Napo River on their way to Ecuador, according to Neal’s sister, Jennifer. The U.S. Embassy told Jennifer that Hand reached out to Peruvian officials after being informed the couple was the subject of a search.

"They said the police reported to them Garrett called them over the phone and gave his passport number and confirmed he and my sister are in good health and that they're fine,” Neal said. "Someone from a town they were passing through had seen them and had been watching the news and told them they need to call the local authorities.”

Neal told NBC Bay Area she was happy to get the news, but won’t be completely at peace until either Hand or her sister makes contact with a family member.

“I still have not talked to my sister," she said. "If it's true, I feel great I'm so glad. I want my sister to be having a blast over there and having fun. I don't want to worry about her and think anything bad happened to her.”

Neal is hoping to hear her sister’s voice tomorrow.

"Supposedly they were going to be hitting the border in Ecuador tomorrow and the authorities were going to make them call their family members when they get there,” Neal said.

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The avid cyclists left for South America at the end of November and regularly chronicled their journey through Facebook, but the updates stopped on Jan. 25, along with any financial activity on the couple’s bank accounts and credit cards.

The couple was unaware of the search effort, which picked up steam over late last week when family members took to social media to generate awareness and help. The family set up a Facebook page called Missing in Peru Garrett Hand and Jamie Neal.

On Feb. 13, the U.S. Embassy in Lima warned Americans of a potential kidnapping threat by an unnamed criminal organization in the Cusco area. The embassy reported the threat to be "credible at least through the end of February."

Francine Fitzgerald, the mother of Garrett Hand released the following statement:

"We have received phone calls from the U.S. Embassy and Peruvian government that my son Garrett Hand and his girlfriend Jamie Neal have been spotted in a remote village in Peru.  The information told to me is that they are on a boat on the river and that they are sending a plane to find them.  I am told to expect information by tomorrow sometime.

While I appreciate the extraordinary efforts of the media, the U.S. and Peruvian governments, until I hear from and see my son directly, we will not stop.  This young couple is someone’s son and brother, someone’s daughter and sister and United States citizens.  We have not heard from them since January 25, nor have they accessed bank accounts since that time.  We have only the worst to consider as to why.

Thank you those of you who are helping – friends, family, reporters, officials – and our task is done when Garrett and Jamie are home and safe."

Ernesto Benavides / AFP - Getty Images

Sheets of counterfeit $50 bills seized by Peru's Department of Criminology are presented to the press in Lima on Wednesday.

Peruvian police have seized $2.3 million in counterfeit dollars, which a family clan planned to smuggle into the United States hidden inside souvenirs from the Andean country, reports said.

According to the British Broadcasting Corp., which cited Peruvian police chief Raul Salazar, the Quispe Rodriguez family clan was responsible for the production of the fake $50 bills.

U.S. officials have said that Peru is the largest foreign producer of counterfeit American money.

Authorities in Peru have seized $17 million in fake currency in 2012 alone, according to the BBC.

Salazar said Luis Alfredo Obando, a man allegedly belonging to the Quispe Rodriguez family clan, was arrested, the BBC said.

US: Peru overtakes Colombia as top cocaine producer

The money and materials for the production of the fake money were seized in the Peruvian capital, Lima, the BBC reported.

Other members of the Quispe Rodriguez clan were arrested in mid-July with $2 million in fake U.S. dollars and 1.5 million counterfeit euros, the Peruvian Times reported.

Among the members of the family allegedly used in the smuggling operation was a 13-year-old boy, the newspaper said.

2 US climbers found dead on Peruvian peak

According to a 2009 report in the Los Angeles Times, many counterfeit currency smugglers use techniques also employed by drug gangs, such as hiding the fake money on human "mules" to get the fake paper inside the country.

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"It's a form of economic terrorism," the Los Angeles Times quoted John Large, the assistant special agent in charge of the Secret Service's criminal division, as saying at the time.

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Ernesto Benavides / AFP - Getty Images, file

A police officer stands amid packages of cocaine seized along with other materials in anti-drug operations in Peru, during a presentation to the press in Lima on May 18, 2012. More than 1.5 tons of cocaine were confiscated.

Peru has again become the top producer of pure cocaine in the world, outpacing Colombia, where output fell by an estimated 25 percent in a year, according to a White House report issued Monday.

Drug czar Gil Kerlikowske, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said Monday that potential cocaine production in Colombia was down by 72 percent since 2001. Colombia now ranks third, behind Bolivia in addition to Peru.

"Potential production of pure cocaine in Colombia is down to 195 metric tons (in 2011) from 700 metric tons in 2001, the lowest production potential level since 1994 and the first time since 1995 that Colombia is producing less cocaine than either Peru or Bolivia," Kerlikowske said in a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 

In the 1980s and 1990s, Peru was the leading producer of cocaine. 

The United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime released an estimate last week that Colombia could produce 345 metric tons of cocaine in 2011. 

Kerlikowske' s office said the drop in Colombia cocaine production has coincided with a decline in U.S. cocaine overdose deaths, positive workplace drug tests, the purity of cocaine available for street purchase and domestic cocaine seizures. 

"Let me add some context to these results. They didn't happen overnight, there was a sustained effort requiring nearly a decade of steady, strategic pressure across more than one administration in both the United States and Colombia." 

But while he called the decrease in production in South America was encouraging, he said the fight against Mexico's drug cartels "pose a significant challenge."

"These numbers are certainly heartening, but they should not distract us from the fact that the transnational criminal organizations that supply cocaine are a threat to civil society everywhere, as we've seen with our southern neighbor Mexico," he added. "This Administration condemns the gruesome drug-related violence and is committed to partnering with the Mexican government to disrupt the cartels that commit such brutality."

Mexico's drug war: No sign of 'light at the end of the tunnel'

Plan Colombia
Kerlikowske said the decline in Colombian cocaine production is largely the result of Plan Colombia, a $7.5 billion U.S.-backed effort launched in 1999 to help the South American government crack down on a left-wing insurgency and drug organizations. 

"The results are historic and have tremendous implications, not just for the United States and the Western Hemisphere, really globally," Kerlikowske said. 

Mariana Bazo / Reuters, file

An anti-narcotics worker burns a bag containing cocaine during a drug incineration in Lima, Peru, on June 27, 2012.

"We don't just have a far safer Colombia, we have a vibrant Colombia that is an active partner in helping with the drug and criminal issue in the region," he added.

Colombia President Juan Manuel Santos said the decline is part of his country's overall strategy of cutting off funding sources for drug traffickers. Speaking in the town of Rio Negro, north of Bogota, Colombia, he said it was good news that Colombia is now third in cocaine production. 

Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzon said the government is also making strides in seizing cocaine, pointing to the confiscation of about 300 tons of the drug in the last two years. 

U.S. Ambassador Michael McKinley told El Tiempo newspaper that "the numbers demonstrate historic advances in ending the fight against drugs in Colombia." 

Speaking Monday, Kerlikowske said while the decline in Colombian production is a positive development, it is not a sign that powerful and deadly drug cartels are going out of business. Instead, he said, these groups, including those waging a drug war against each other and the government in Mexico, will "turn to anything illegal that makes money."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Peru Police via AP

A Peru police photo shows a yellow tent believed by authorities to belong to U.S. climbers Gil Weiss and Ben Horne near Palcaraju Peak in Huaraz, Peru.

Searchers on Saturday found the bodies of two U.S. mountaineers who apparently plunged 1,000 feet to their deaths on their way down from the summit of a glacier-capped Peruvian peak.

Gil Weiss, 29, and Ben Horne, 32, fell off a ridge after reaching the west summit of 20,584-foot Palcaraju in the Cordillera Blanca range in mid-July, search coordinator Ted Alexander told The Associated Press.

Their bodies will be recovered Sunday, he said.

More at NBCSanDiego.com: Climber remembered by father, friend

Both Weiss, of Queens, N.Y., and Horne, of Annandale, Va., were experienced climbers. Weiss was a repeat visitor to the Cordillera Blanca while this trip was Horne's first.

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Both belong to the pullharder.org climbers' collective, and Horne wrote about the first, six-day leg of their trip on its blog, saying they had been buffeted by hurricane-force winds when the two reached the top of the 20,216-foot Ranrapalca.

After a rest in Huaraz, the two set out again July 11 for an excursion of seven to 10 days. Their families contacted Alexander after 13 days passed with no word from them.

Weiss's sister, Galit, said the two were not carrying a satellite phone.

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Horne was a graduate student in economics at the University of California, San Diego. Weiss was founder of a business a Boulder, Colo., business called Beyond Adventure Productions that specialized in organizing and photographing events in remote and spectacular locations.

The Cordillera Blanca climbing season runs from June to September, and the deaths of Weiss and Horne bring to eight the number of mountaineers who have lost their lives in the range so far this year, the AP said.

This article includes reporting by The Associated Press.

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LIMA -- Peru's top court has ruled Dutch citizen Joran van der Sloot can be extradited to the United States in connection with the 2005 disappearance in Aruba of Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway - but only after serving a 28-year Peruvian prison sentence for murder. 

According to documents seen by Reuters, Peru's Supreme Court decided last week that Van der Sloot's extradition must wait until he serves out his sentence for the 2010 killing of a young Peruvian business student in Lima. The sentence handed down in January is under appeal.

Van der Sloot, 24, is wanted in the United States for extortion in connection with the unsolved Holloway case in which he was a prime suspect.

Van der Sloot's lawyer Maximo Altez defended the extradition delay, saying it would be impossible for his client to get a fair trial in the U.S., Peru's El Comercio reported (Link in Spanish).

PhotoBlog: Trial of Van der Sloot begins in Peru as shamans peform a 'spiritual punishment'

"At this moment Joran van der Sloot will not have a fair trial in the United States because he has been satanized by the press, he is looked at like a demon," he told the newspaper. 

However, van der Sloot could spend less than a decade behind bars in Peru because the country often frees prisoners for good behavior after serving a third of their terms. His lawyers want his sentence cut anyway.

US asks Peru to extradite van der Sloot

"We were surprised by how quickly the extradition request was heard," Altez told Reuters. "We think there is a lot of pressure from the U.S. government."

The U.S. embassy in Lima didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. It initiated a process to extradite Van der Sloot to face charges of extortion on January 30.

Prosecutors say van der Sloot, who was arrested but never charged over Holloway's disappearance, tried to get thousands of dollars in cash from her family in exchange for information on the whereabouts of her body.

Judge agrees Natalee Holloway is dead

Holloway was last seen during a graduation trip to the Caribbean island of Aruba.

Van der Sloot's lawyers have argued that post-traumatic stress from the Holloway inquiries led Van der Sloot to kill 21-year-old Stephany Flores in a Lima hotel room after he saw her looking at his laptop, which contained e-mails about the Aruba case. They had met playing poker in a Lima casino. 

Reuters contributed to this report.

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