Miracle in the Andes Chapter 4 PDF

"An astonishing account of an unimagi , _,,, ',~ -JON KRAKAUER JO '} Chapter Four reathe Once More F ,,,,,,- ~- ! ~:"' _t_ , --, ~-~~)- ~ -..,n. ,.~ -~' 72, Days on the Mountain and My Long J'rek Home PARRA DO Wliti ViNEf. RA!JSE ' j IN TH!l HOURS after we buried Susy, l sat alone in the dark fusela...

"An astonishing account of an unimagi , _,,, ',~ -JON KRAKAUER JO '} Chapter Four reathe Once More F ,,,,,,- ~- ! ~:"' _t_ , --, ~-~~)- ~ -..,n. ,.~ -~' 72, Days on the Mountain and My Long J'rek Home PARRA DO Wliti ViNEf. RA!JSE ' j IN TH!l HOURS after we buried Susy, l sat alone in the dark fuselage, slumped against the Fairchild's tilting wall with my shattered skull cradled in my hands. Powerful emotions stormed my heartdisbelief, outrage, sorrow, and fear-and then, finally, a sense of weary acceptance washed over me like a sigh. I was too depressed and confused to see it at the time, but it seemed my mind was racing through the stages of grief at breakneck speed. In my old life, my ordinary life in Montevideo, the loss of my little sister would have brought my existence to a standstill and left me emotionally staggered for months. But nothing was ordinary anymore, and something primal in me understood that in this unforgiving place, I could not afford the luxury of grieving. Once again I heard that cold, steady voice in my head rise above the emotional chaos, Look forward, it said. Save your strength for the things you can change, If you cling to the past, you will die. I didn't want to let go of my sorrow. I missed having Susy with me in the fuselage, whe~e I could comfort and care for her, and my sadness was my only connection to her now, but I seemed to have no say in the matter. As the long night passed and I struggled to fight the cold, the intensity of my emotions began to fade and my feelings for my sister simply dissolved, the way a dream dissolves as you wake. By morning all I felt was a sour, dull emptiness as my beloved Susy, like my mother and Panchito, drifted into my past, a past that was already beginning to , feel distant and unreal. The mountains were forcing me to change. , -MY mind was growing colder and simpler as it adjusted to my new ',reality.I began to see life as it must appear to an animal struggling l 76 / Nanda Parrado MIRACLE IN THE ANDES \ 77 to survive-as a simple game of win or lose, life or death, risk and opportunity. Basic instincts were taldng hold, suppressing complex emotions and narrowing the focus of my mind until my entire existence seemed to revolve around the two new organizing principles of my life: the chilling apprehe~sion that I was going to die, and the searing need to be with my father. In the days after Susy died, my love for my father was the only thing that kept me sane, and time after time I would calm myself by reaffirming the promise I had made at Susy's grave: to return to him; to show him I had survived and to ease his suffering a little. My heart swelled witl1 longing to be with him, and not a moment passed that I did not picture him in his anguish. Who was comforting him? How was he fighting off despai,r? I imagined him wandering at night from one empty room to another, or tossing until dawn in his bed. How it must torture him to feel so helpless. How betrayed he must feel-to have spent a lifetime protecting and providing for the family he cherished, only to have that family ripped away. He was the strongest II\an I knew, but was he strong enough to endure this kind of loss? Would he keep his sanityf Would he lose all hope and his will to live? Sometimes my imagination got the best of me, and I worried that he might harm himself, choosing to end his suffering and join his loved ones in death. Thinking of my father this way always triggered in me a burst of love so radiant and urgent that it took my breath away. I couldn't stand the thought that he would suffer one second longer. In my desperation, I raged silently at the great peaks that loomed above the crash site, blocking the path to my father, and trapping me in this evil place where I could do nothing to ease his pain. That claustrophobic frustration gnawed at me until, like a man buried alive, I began to panic. Every moment that passed was filled with a visceral fear, as if the earth beneatli my feet were a ticking bomb that might explode at any second; as if I stood blindfolded before a firing squad, waiting to feel the bullets slam into my chest. This terrifying sense of vulnerability-the certainty that doom was only moments away-never rested. It filled every moment of my time on the mountain. It became the backdrop for every iliought and conversation. And it produced in me a manic urge to flee. I fought this fear the best I could, trying to calm myself and think clearly, but there were moments when animal instinct threatened to overcome reason, and it would take all my strength to keep from bolting off blindly into the cordillera. At first, the only way I could quiet these fears was to picture in my mind the moment when rescuers would arrive to save us. In the early days of the ordeal, this was the hope we all clung to. Marcelo fed these hopes with his assurances, but as the days passed and the absence of the rescuers became harder to explain, Marcelo, a deeply devout Catholic, began to rely more and more upon the beliefs that had always shaped his life. "G9d loves us," he would say, "He would not ask us to endure such suffering only to turn his back on us and allow us to die meaningless deaths." It was not our place to ask why God was testing us so harshly, Marcelo insisted. Our duty-to God, to our families, alld to each other-was to survive from one moment to the next, to accept our fears and suffering, and to be alive when the rescuers finally found us. Marcelo's words had a powerful effect on the others, most of whom embraced his arguments without question. I wanted to believe in Marcelo so badly, but as time passed I could not silence the doubts that were growing in my mind. We had always assumed that the authorities knew roughly where our plane had gone down. They must have known our route ilirough ilie mountains, we told ourselves, and surely the pilots had radioed along the way. It would sin1ply be a matter of searching along the flight path, beginning at the point of the last radio contact. How hard could it be to spot the wreckage of a large airplane lying in plain view on an open glacier! But surely, I thought, a concentrated search would have found us by now, and the fact that rescue hadn't come forced me to 78 / Nanda Parrado consider two grim conclusions: either they had a mistaken idea of where we had fallen, and were searching soni.e other stretch of the cordillera, or, they had no idea at all where in the sprawling mountains we might be, and no efficient way to narrow their search. I re membered the wildness of the mountains as we flew through Planch6n Pass, all those steep-walled ravines plunging thousands of feet along the slopes of so many black, winding ridges, and noth ing but more slopes and ridges as far as the eye could see. These thoughts forced me to a grim conclusion: They haven't found us yet because they have no idea where we are, and if they don't know even roughly where we are, they will never find us. At first I kept these thoughts to myself, telling myself I didn't want to dash the hopes of the others. But perhaps I had motives that were not so selfless. Perhaps I didn't want to speak my feelings out loud because I feared that would make them real. When hope is lost, the mind protects us with denial, and my denial protected me from facing what I knew. Despite all my doubts about the likelihood of rescue, I still wanted what the others wanted-for some· one to come and lift me out of this hell, to take me home and give me back my life. No matter how forcefully my instincts told me to abandon wishful thinking, I could not allow myself to shut the door on the possibility of a miracle. Ignoring the hopelessness of our plight, my heart continued to hope just as naturally as it continued to beat. So I prayed every night with the others, beseeching God to speed the rescuers on their way. I listened for the fluttering drone of helicopters approaching. I nodded in agreement when Marcelo urged us all to keep faith. Still, my doubts would never rest, and in every quiet moment my mind would drift off to the west, to the massive ridges that penned us in, and a barrage of frightful questions woul~ erupt in my brain. What if we have to climb out of here on our own? I wondered. Do I have the strength to survive a trek through this wilderness? How steep are the slopes? How MIRACLE IN THE ANDES \ 79 cold at night? Is the footing stable? What pat~ should I follow? What would happen if I fell? And always: What lies to the west, beyond those black ridges? Deep down, I always knew we'd have to save ourselves. Eventually I began to express this belief to the others, and the more I spoke of it, the more the thought of climbing obsessed me. I examined the idea from every angle. I began to rehearse my escape so vividly and so often that my daydreams soon became as real as a movie playing in my head. I'd see myself climbing the white slopes toward those bleak summits, visualizing every fragile finger-hold in the snow, testing each rock for stability before I grasp it, studying each careful placement of my feet. I'd be lashed by freezing winds, gasping in the thin air, struggling through hip-deep snow. In my daydream, each step of the ascent is an agony, but I do not stop, I struggle upward until finally I reach the summit and look to the west. Spreading out before me is a b,oad valley sloping down to ward the horizon. In the near distance I see the snowfields give way to a neat patchwork of browns and greens-the cultivated fields that blanket the valley floor. The fields are bisected by thin gray lines, and I know these lines are roads. I stumble down the westward side of the mountain and hike for hours over rocky terrain until I reach one of those roads, then I walk west on the smooth asp):,.alt surface. Soon I hear the rumble of an approaching truck. I flag down the startled diver. He is wary of such a desperate stranger hiking in the middle of nowhere. I would have to make him understand, and I know exactly what to say: Vengo de un avi6n que cay6 en las montalias ,.. I come from a plane that fell in the mountains , , , He understands, and lets me climb into the cab. We travel west through the green farmlands to the nearest town, where I find a phone. I dial my father's number, and in moments I hear his astonished sobs as he recognizes my voice. A day or two later we are 80 / Nanda Parrado MIRACLE IN THE ANDES \ 81 together and I see the look in his eyes-a little joy now, shining through all the sadness. He says nothing, just my name. I feel him collapse against me when I take him into my arms... Like a mantra, like my own personal myth, this dream soon became my touchstone, my lifeline, and I nurtured it and refined it until it sparkled in my mind like a jewel. Many of the others thought I was crazy, that climbing out of the cordillera was impossible, but as the fantasy of escape became more lucid, the promise I made to my father took on the power of a sacred calling. It focused my mind, turned my fears to motivation, and gave me a sense of direction and high purpose that lifted me out of the black well of helplessness in which I'd languished since the crash. I still prayed with Marcelo and the others, I still petitioned God for a miracle, I still strained my ears each night to hear the distant sound of helicopters weaving their way through the cordillera. But when none of those measures could calm me, when my fears grew so violent I thought they would drive me insane, I would close my eyes and think of my father. I would renew my promise to return to him, and, in my mind, I would climb. crash site, Antonio Vizintin, who had almost bled to death from a lacerated arm, was rapidly recovering his strength. Pita Strauch and his cousin Eduardo had been knocked senseless in the final impact, but they had recovered quickly. Only three of us, in fact, had suffered truly serious wounds. The damage to my head was one of the worst injuries suffered in the accident, but the shattered fragments of my skull were beginning to knit themselves together, which left only two of us with truly serious wounds: Arturo Nogueira, who suffered multiple fractures to both of his legs, and Rafael Echavarren, whose calf muscle had been ripped loose ·from the bone. Both boys were in severe and constant pain, and watching them in their agony was one of the greatest horrors we had to face. We did what we could for them, Roberto fashioned beds for them, simple swinging hammocks, made from aluminum poles and sturdy nylon straps we'd salvaged from the luggage hold. Suspended in the hammocks, Rafael and Arturo were spared the agony of sleeping with the rest of us in that restless tangle of humanity on the fuselage floor, where the slightest bump or jostle caused them excruciating pain. In the swinging beds they no longer shared the warmth of our huddled bodies, and they suffered more intensely from the cold. But for them the cold, cruel as it was, was a smaller misery than the pain. AFTER Susy's DEATH, twenty-seven survivors remained. Most of us had suffered bruises and lacerations, bµt considering the forces unleashed in the accident, and the fact that we had experienced three severe impacts at very high speed, it was a miracle so few of us had been badly injured. Some of us had escaped with barely.. scratch. Roberto and Gustavo had suffered only light injuries. Others, including Liliana, Javier, Pedro Algorta, Mancha Sabella, Daniel Shaw, Bobby Franc;:ois, and Juan Carlos Mendendez-a former student at Stella Maris and a friend of Pancho Delgado's-had also survived with only cuts an'd scrapes. Those with more serious injuries, like Delgado and Alvaro Mangino, who had broken his legs in the crash, were now on the mend, and able to hobble around the Rafael was not an Old Christian, but he had friends on the team who had invited him on the trip. I didn't know him before the flight, but I'd noticed him on the plane. He was laughing heartily :with his friends, and he struck me as a friendly and openhearted guy. I liked him immediately, and only liked him better as I saw how he bore his suffering. Roberto kept a close eye on Rafael's wounds and treated them as best he could, but our medical supplies were pathetic and there was little he could do. Each day he wo1i.ld change the bloody bandages and bathe the wounds in some eau de cologne he had found, hoping that the alcohol content would keep the wounds from going septic. But Rafael's wounds 82 / Nando Parrado MIRACLE IN THE ANDJlS \ 83 were constantly oozing pus, and the skin of his leg was already. turning black Gustavo and Roberto suspected gangrene, but Rafael never allowed himself to sink into self-pity. Instead he kept his courage and humor, even as the poison flowed through his system and the flesh of his leg rotted before his eyes. "I am Rafael Echavarrenl" he would shout every morning, "and I will not die here!" There was no surrender in Rafael, no matter how he suffered, and I felt stronger every time I heard him say those words. Arturo, on the other hand, was a quieter, more serious.boy. He was a teammate, a fly half for the Old Christians First XV. I hadn't been especially close to him before the crash, but the courage with which he bore his suffering drew me to him. Like Rafael, Arturo should have been in an intensive care ward, with specialists tending to him around the clock. But he was here in the Andes, swinging in a makeshift hammock, with no antibiotics or pain relievers, and only a couple of first-year medical students and a gang of inexperienced boys to care for him. Pedro Algorta, another of the team's supporters, was especially close to Arturo, and he spent many hours with his friend, bringing him food and water, and trying to distract him from his pain. The rest of us also took turns sitting with him, as we did with Rafael. I always looked forward to my conversations with Arturo. At first we talked mostly about rugby. Kicking is an important part of the game-a well-placed kick can change the course of a match-and Arturo was the strongest and most accurate kicker on our team. I would remind him of great kicks he had made at crucial moments in our matches, a,nd ask him how he'd managed to boot the ball with such distance and precision. Arturo enjoyed these conversations, I think. He took pride in his kicking ability, and he often tried to teach me his techniques as he lay in his hammock. Sometimes he would forget himself and try to demonstrate a kick with one of his shattered legs, which would cause him to wince in pain, and remind us where we were. But as I got to know Arturo, our conversations went much deeper than sports. Arturo was different from the rest of us. For one thing, he was a passionate socialist, and his uncompromising views of capitalism and the pursuit of personal wealth made him something of an oddball in the world of affluence and privilege in which most of us had been raised. Some of the guys thought h-, was simply posing-dressing in shabby clothes and reading Marxist philosophy just to be contrary. Arturo was not an easygoing person. He could be prickly and strident in his opinions, and this rubbed many of the guys the wrong way, but as I got to understand him a little, I began to admire his way of thinking. It wasn't his politics I was drawn to-at that age I barely had a political thought in my head. What fascinated me about Arturo was the seriousness with which he lived his life and the fierce passion with which he !lad learned to think for himself. Important things mattered to Arturo, matters of equality, justice, compassion, and fairness. He was not afraid to question any of the rules of conventional society, or to condemn our system of government and economics, which he believed served tl1e powerful at the expense of the weak. Arturo's strong opinions bothered many of the others, and often led to angry arguments at night concerning history or politics or current affairs, but I always wanted to hear what Arturo had to say, and I was especially intrigued by his thoughts about religion. Like most of the other survivors, I had been raised as a traditional Catholic, and though I was no one's idea of a devout practitioner, I never doubted the fundamental teachings of the Church, Talking with Arturo, however, forced me to confront my religious beliefs, and to examine principles and values I had never questioned. "How can you be so sure that of all the sacred books in the world, the one you were taught to believe in is the only authentic word of God?" he would ask. "How do you know that your idea of God is the only one that's true? We are a Catholic country because 84 I Nando Parrado MIRACLE IN THE ANDES \ 85 the Spanish came and conquered the Indians here, then they replaced the God of the Indians with Jesus Christ. If the Moors had conquered South America, we would all be praying to Muhammad instead o[Jesus:' Arturo's ideas disturbed roe, but his thinking was compelling. And it fascinated me that despite all his religious skepticism, he was a very spiritual person, who sensed my anger at God, and urged roe not to turn away from Him because of our suffering. "What good is God to us?" I replied. "Why would he let my mother and sister die so senselessly? If he loves us so much, why does He leave us here to suffer?" "You are angry at the God you were taught to believe in as a child;' Arturo answered. "The God who is supposed to watch over you and protect you, who answers your prayers and forgives your sins. This God is just a story. Religions try to capture God, but God is beyond religion. The true God lies beyond our comprehension. We can't understand His will; He can't be explained in a book. He didn't abandon us and He will not save us. He has nothing to do with our being here. God does not change, He simply is. I don't pray to God for forgiveness or favors, I only pray to be doser to Him, and when I pray, I fill my heart with love. When I pray this way, I know that God is love. When I feel that love, I remember that we don't need angels or a heaven, because we are a part of God already:' I shook my head. "I have so many doubts," I said. "I feel I have earned the right to doubt." "Trust your doubts," said Arturo. "If you have the balls to doubt God, and to question all the things you have been taught about Him, then you may find God for real. He is close to us, Nanda. I feel Him all around us. Open your eyes and you will see Hirn, too." I looked at Arturo, this ardent young socialista lying in his hammock with his legs broken like sticks and his eyes shining with faith and encouragement, and I felt a strong surge of affection for him. His words moved me deeply. How did such a young man come to know himself so well? Talking with Arturo forced me to face the fact that I had never taken my own life seriously. I had taken so much for grnnted, spending my energy on girls and cars and parties, and coasting so casually through my days. After all, what was the hurry? It would all be there tomorrow for me to figure out. There was always tomorrow... I laughed sadly to myself, thinking, If there is a God, and if He wanted my attention, He certainly has it now. Often I would Jean over Arturo with my arm across his chest to keep him warm. As I listened to his rhythmic breathing, and felt his body tense periodically from the pain, I said to myself, This is truly a man. There were others whose courage and selflessness also inspired me. Enrique Platero, whose abdomen had been impaled by a pipe in the final impact, was able to shrug off his injury as if it were a scratch and become one of our hardest workers, even though a week after the crash a portion of his intestine still protruded from the puncture wound in his gut. I had always liked Enrique, I admired the respect he showed for his parents, and the obvious affection he felt for his family, who attended all our games. Enrique, who played the prop position, was not a flashy player, but he was a steady and dependable presence on the field, always in position, holding nothing back in his effort to help us win. He was the same here on the mountaiq. He always did what was asked of him, and more; he never complained or openly despaired, and though he was a very quiet presence in the fuselage, we knew he would always do all he could to help us survive. I was also impressed by the strength of Gustavo Nicho!ich, whom we called Coco. Coco was a third row forward for the Old Christians. Fast, strong, and an excellent tackler, he was a tough player, but he had a warm spirit and a fine sense of humor. Marcelo had put Coco in charge of the clean-up crew,.which was made up mostly of the younger boys in our group-Alvaro Mangino, Cache MIRACLE IN°THE ANDES \ 87 86 / Nando Parrado Inciarte, Bobby Fran~ois, and the others. Their job was to keep the fuselage as tidy as possible, to air out the seat cushions we slept on every morning, and tQ arrange the cushions on the floor of ~e plane every night before we all went to sleep. Coco made sure his crew members took their responsibilities seriously, but he also knew that by keeping the young guys busy, he was keeping their minds off their fear. As he led the boys through their paces, he kept their spirits up by telling jokes and stories. During breaks, he would coax them to play charades and other games. Whenever anyone was laughing, it was usually Coco's doing. The sound oflaughter ~ those mountains was like a miracle, and I admired Coco for his courage-Jiglitening so many spirits when, like the rest of us, he was so weary and afraid. And I was especially impressed with the strength and courage of Liliane. Methol. Liliana, thirty-five years old, was the wife of Javier Methol, who, at the age of thirty-eight, was the oldest of all the survivors. Liliana and Javier were extremely close and affectionate with each other, They were both avid fans of the team, but for them this trip was also to be a short romantic getaway, a chance to enjoy a rare weekend alone together, away from the four young children they had left with grandparents at home. Immediately after the crash, Javier had been stricken by a severe dase of altitude si~ess, which left him in a constant state of nausea and profound fatigue. His trunking was slow and muddled, and he could do little more than stumble about the cri1Sh site in a semi-stupor. Liliana spent much of her time caring for him, but she also found time to serve as a tireless nurse for Roberto and Gustavo, and was great help to a them as they cared for the injured. After Susy died, Liliana was the only woman survivor, and at first we treated her with deference, insisting that she sleep alongside the seriously injured in the Fairchild's luggage compartment, which was the warmest section of the plane. She did so for only a few nights, and then she told us she would no longer accept such ~pedal treatment. From that point on, she slept in the main section of the fuselage with the rest of us, where she would gather the youngest boys around her, doing her best to comfort them and keep them warm. "Keep your head covered, Coche:' she would say, as we lay in the shadows at night, "you're coughing too much, the cold is irritating your throat, Bobby, are you warm enough? Do you want me to rub your feet?" She worried constantly about the children she had left at home, but still she had the courage and love to mother these frightened boys who were so far from their families. She became a second mother for all of us, and she was everything you would want a mother to be: strong, soft, loving, patient, and very brave. But the mountains showed me there were many forms of bravery, and for me, even the quietest ones among us showed great courage simply by living from day to day. All of them contributed, by their simple presence and the force of their personalities, to the close sense of community and common purpose that gave us some protection from the brutality and ruthlessness that surrounded us. Coche Inciarte, for example, gave us his quick, irreverent wit and warm smile. Carlitos was a source of constant optimism and humor. Pedro Algorta, a close friend of Arturo's, was an unconventional thinker, highly opinionated, and very smart, and I enjoyed talkini; with him at night. I felt especially protective of Alvaro Mangino, an amiable, soft-spoken supporter of the team who was one of the youngest guys on the plane, and I often sought a sleeping space beside him. If not for Diego Storm, who had pulled me in from the cold while, I still lay in a coma, I would certainly have frozen to death beside Panchito. Daniel Fernandez, another cousin of Fito's, was a steady, level-headed presence in the fuselage who helped ward off panic. Pancho Delgado, a sharp-witted, articulate law student and one of Marcelo's strongest supporters, helped keep our hopes alive with his eloquent assurances that rescue was on the way. And then there was Bobby Fran~ois, whose forthright, 88 / MIRACLE IN THE ANDES \ 89 Nando Parrado unapologetic, almost cheerful refusal to fight for his life somehow charmed us all. Bobby seemed unable to care for himself in even the simplest ways-if his covers came off him at night, for example, he would not exert the effort to ~over himself up again. So we all looked out for Bobby, doing our best to keep him from freezing, checking his feet for frostbite, making sure he rolled out-of bed in the morning. All of these boys were a part of our family in the mountains, contributing, in whatever ways they could, to our common struggle. But for all the different kinds of courage I saw around me, the blatant and the subtle, I knew that every one of us lived each moment in fear, and I saw each survivor deal with those fears in his or her own fashion. Some of them vented their fears through anger, raging at the fates for stranding us here, or at the authorities for being so slow in coming to save us. Others begged God for answers and pleaded for a miracle. And many were so incapacitated by their fears, by all the forces stacked so grimly against us, that th~y sank into despair. Those boys showed no initiative at all. They would work only if forced, and even then they could only be trusted to do the simplest chores. With each day that passed, they seemed to fade more deeply into the background, growing more depressed and listless until finally some of them grew so apathetic they would lie all day in the same spot where they had slept, waiting for rescue or death, whichever might come first. They dreamed of home and prayed for miracles, but as they languished in the shadows of the fuselage, tortured hy fears of dying, with their eyes dull and hollow, they were becoming ghosts already. Those of us who were strong enough to work were not always gentle with these boys. With all the pressures we were facing, it was hard at times not to think of them as cowards or parasites. Most of them were not seriously injured, and it angered us that they could not summon the will to join in our common fight to survive. "Move your ass!" we would shout at them. "Do something! You '' aren't dead yet!" This emotional rift between the workers and the lost boys created a potential fault lin,e in our small community that could have led to conflict, cruelty, and even violence. But somehow that never happened. We never surrendered to recrimination and blame. Perhaps it was all the years together on the rugby field. Perhaps the Christian Brothers had taught u~ well. In any case, we were able to rein in our resentments and struggle as a team. Those who had the heart for it, and the physical strength, did what had to be done. The weaker ones, and the injured, simply endured. We tried to prod them into action, sometimes we bossed them, but we never despised them or abandoned them to their own fates. We understood, intuitively, that no one in this awful place could be judged by the standards of the ordinary world. The horrors we faced were overwhelming, and there was no telling how any one of us might react at any given time. In this place, even simple survival required heroic effort, and these boys were fighting their own private battles in the shadows. We knew it was useless to ask anyone to do more than he could. So we made sure they had enough to eat and warm clothes to wear. In the coldest hours of the night we massaged their feet to protect them from frostbite. We made sure they covered themselves well at night, and we melted water for them when they couldn't muster the optimism required to go outside and breathe fresh air. Above all, we remained comrades in our suffering. We had lost too many friend already. Every life was precious to us. We would do what we could to help all of our friends survive. "Breathe once more:' we would tell the weaker ones, when the cold, or their fears, or despair, would shove them to the edge of surrender. "Live for one more breath. As Jong as you breathe, you are fighting to survive." In fact, all of us on the mountain were living our lives one breath at a time, and struggling to find the will we needed to endure from one heartbeat to the next. We suffered each moment, and in many ways, but always the source of our greatest suffering was the cold. Our bodies never adjusted to the frigid 90 I Nanda Parrado temperatures-no human body could, It was early spring in the Andes, but very wintry still, and often bliz1.ards raged around the clock, keeping us trapped inside the plane. But on clear days the strong mountain sun beat do)Vn and we spent as much time outside the fuselage as possible, soaking up the warming rays. We had even dragged some of the Fairchild's seats outside the plane and arranged them on the snow like lawn chairs so we could sit as we basked in the sun. But all too soon the sun would dip behind the ridges to the west, and in what seemed like seconds the crac.kling blue sky would fade to deep violet, stars would appear, and shadows would stream down the side of tj1e mountain toward us like a tide. Without the sun to warm the thin air, temperatures would plummet, and we would retreat to the shelter of the fuselage to prepare for the misery of another night, High-altitude cold is an aggressive and malevolent thing. It burns you and slashes you, it invades every cell of your body, it presses down on you with a force that seems strong enough to crack bone. The drafty fuselage shielded us from the winds that would have killed us, but still, the air inside the plane was viciously frigid. We had cigarette lighters, and could easily have lit a fire, but there was very little combustible material on the mountain. We burned all the paper money we had-almost $7,500 went up in smoke-and we found enough scrap wood in the plane to fuel two or three small fires, but these fires burned themselves out quickly, and the brief luxury of warmth only made tile cold seem worse when the flames had died. For the most part, ou~ best defense against the cold was to huddle togetller on tile loose seat cushions we'd scattered over the aircraft's floor and draw our flimsy blankets around us, hoping to gatller enough warmtll from each otller's bodies to survive anotller night. I would lie in the dark for hours, my teetll chattering violently, and my body shivering so hard that the muscles of my neck and shoulders were constantly in spasm. MIRACLE IN THE ANDES \ 91 We were all very careful about protecting our extremities from frostbite, so I always kept my hands tucked under my armpits as I slept, and my feet beneath someone's body. Still the cold made my fingers and toes feel as if they'd been struck by a mallet. Sometimes, when I feared tllat tile blood was freei.ing in my veins, I would ask tile others to punch my arms and legs to stimulate circulation. Al ways I slept witll a blanket over my head to trap tile warmth of my exhaled breath. Sometinles I would lie with my head close to the f~ce of the boy next to me, to steal a little breath, a little warmtll, from hinl, Some nights we talked, but it was difficult, since our teeth chattered and our jaws trembled in th~ frigid air. I often tried to distract myself from my misery by praying, or by picturing my father at home, but the cold could not be ignored for very long, Sometinles tllere was nothing you could do but surrender to the suffering and count the seconds until morning. Often, in those helpless moments, I was certain l was going mad. The cold was always our greatest agony, but in the earliest days of tile ordeal, the greatest threat we faced was tllirst. At high altitude, the human body dehydrates five times faster tllan it does at sea level, primarily because of the low levels of oxygen in the atmosphere. To draw sufficient oxygen from the lean mountain air, the body forces itself to breatlle very rapidly. This is an involuntary reaction; often you pant just standing still. Increased inhalations bring more oxygen into tile bloodstream, but each time you breatlle in you must also breatlle out, and precious moisture is lost each tinle you exhale. A human being can survive at sea level for a week or longer without water. In the Andes the margin of safety is much slimmer, and each breath brings you closer to death. There certainly was no lack of water in the mountains-we were sitting on a snow-packed glacier, surrounded by millions of tons of frozen H,O. Our problem was making tile snow drinkable. Well-equipped mountain climbers carry sinall gas stoves to melt 92 / Nanda Parrado MIRACLE IN THE ANDES \ 93 snow into drinking water, and they guzzle water constantlygallons every day-to keep themselves safely hydrated. We had no stoves, and no efficient way to melt snow, At first we simply scooped handfuls of snow into our mouths and tried to eat it, but after only a few days our lips were so cracked, bloody, and raw from the arid cold that forcing the icy clumps of snow into our mouths became an unbearable agony. We found that if we packed the snow into a ball and warmed the ball in our hands, we could suck drops of water from the snowball as it melted. We also melted snow by sloshing it around inside empty wine bottles, and we slurped it up from every small puddle we could find. For example, the snow on the top of the fuselage would melt in the sun, sending a trickle of water down the aircraft's windshield, where it would collect in a small aluminum channel that held the base of the windshield in place. On sunny days we would line up and wait our turn to suck a little water out of the channel, but it was never enough to satisfy our cravings. In fact, none of our efforts to make drinkable water were providing us with enough fluid to fight off dehydration. We were weakening, growing lethargic and thickheaded as toxins accumulated in our blood. Surrounded by a frozen ocean, we were slowly dying of thirst. We needed an efficient way to melt snow quickly, and, thanks to Fito's inventiveness, we found one. One sunny morning, as he sat outside the fuselage, craving water like the rest of us, Fito noticed that the sun was melting the thin crust of ice that formed every night on the snow. An idea came to him. He quietly rummaged through a pile of wreckage that had been dragged out of the fuselage and soon found, beµeath the torn upholstery of a battered seat, a small rectangular sheet of thin aluminum. He turned up the corners of the aluminum sheet to form a shallow basin, and pinched one of the corners to form a spout. Then he filled the basin.with snow and set 1t in the bright sunshine. In no time the snow was melting and water was trickling eyteadily from the spout. Fito collected the water in a bottle, and when the others saw how well his contraption worked, they gathered more of the aluminum sheets-there was one in every seat-and fas)uoned them in the same way. Marcelo was so impressed with Pita's contraptions that he formed a crew of boys whose main responsibility was to tend them, making sure we had a constant supply of water. We could not produce as much as we really needed, and our thirst ':as never quenc~ed, but Pita's ingenuity did give us enough hydration to keep us alive. We were holding our own. Through cleverness and cooperation, we had found ways to keep the cold and thirst from killing us, but soon we faced a problem that cleverness and teamwork alone could not resolve. Our food supplies were dwindling. We were beginning to starve. In the early days of the ordeal, hunger was not a great concern for us. The cold and the mental shock we'd endured, along with the depression and fear we all were feeling, acted to curb our appetites, and since we were convinced that rescuers would find us soon, we were content to get by on the meager rations Marcelo doled out. But rescue did not come. One morning near the end of our first week in the mountains, I found myself standing outside the fuselage, looking down at the s~gle chocolate-covered peanut I cradled in my palm. Our supplies had been exhausted, this was the last morsel of food 1 would be given, and wit!, a sad, almost miserly desperation I was determined to make it last. On the first day, I slowly sucked the chocolate off the peanut, then I slipped the peanut into the pocket of my slacks. On the s°'ond day I carefully separated the peanut halves slipping one half back into my pocket and placing the other half~ my mouth. I sucked gently on the peanut for hours, alJowing my self only a tiny nibble now and then. I did the same on the third day, and when I'd finally nibbled the peanut down to notliing, tliere was no food left at all. - 94 / Nando Parrado MIRACLE IN TRE ANDES \ 95 At high altitude, the body's caloric needs are astronomical. A. climber scaling any of the mountains surrounding the crash site would have required as many as 15,000 calories a day simply to maintain his current body weight. We were not climbing, but even so, at such high altitude our caloiic requirements were much higher than they w~uld have been at home. Since the crash, even before our rations had run out, we had never consumed more than a few hundred calories a day. Now, for days, our intake was down to zero. When we boarded the plane in Montevideo, we were sturdy and vigorous young men, many of us athletes in peak physical condition. Now I saw the faces of my friends growing thin and drawn. Their movements were sluggish and uncertain, and there was a weary dullness in their eyes. We were starving in earnest, with no hope of finding food, but our hunger soon grew so voracious that we searched anyway. We became obsessed by the search for food, but what drove us was nothing like ordinary appetite. When the brain senses the onset of starvation-that is, when it realizes that the body has begun to break down its own flesh and tissue to use as fuel-it sets off an adrenaline surge of alarm just as jarring and powerful as the impulse that compels a hunted, animal to flee from an attacking predator. Primal instincts had asserted themselves, and it was really fear more than hlinger that compelled us to search so frantically for food. Again and again we scoured the fuselage in search of crumbs and morsels. We tried to eat strips ofleather torn from pieces of luggage, though we knew that the chemicals they'd been treated with would do us more harm than good. We ripped open seat cushions hoping to find straw, but found only inedible upholstery foam. Even after I was convinced that there was not a scrap of anything edible to be found, my mind would not rest. I would spend hours compulsively racking my brain for any possible source of food. Maybe there is a plant growing somewhere, or some insects under a rock. Maybe the pilots had snacks in the cockpit. Perhaps some food was thrown out by accident when we dragged the seats from the plane. We should check the trash pile again. Did we check all the packets of the dead before they were buried? Again and again I came to the same conclusion: unless we wanted to eat the clothes we were wearing, there was nothing here but aluminum, plastic, ice, and rock. Sometimes I would rise from a long silence to shout out loud in my frustration: "There is nothing in this fucking place to eat/" But of course there was food on the mountain-there was meat, plenty of it, and all in easy reach. It was as near as the bodies of the dead lying outside the fuselage under a thin layer of frost. It puzzles me that despite my compulsive drive to find anything edible, I ignored for so long the obvious presence of the only edible objects within a hundred miles. There are some lines, I suppose, that the mind is very slow to cross, but when my mind did finally cross that line, it did so with an impulse so primitive it shocked me. It was late afternoon and we were lying in the fuselage, preparing for night. My gaze fell on the slowly healing leg wound of a boy lying near me. The center of the wound was moist and raw, and there was a crust of dried blood at the edges. I could not stop looking at t)i.at crust, and as I smelled the faint blood-scent in the air, I felt my appetite rising. Then I looked up 111\d met the gaze of other boys who had also been staring at the wound. In shame, we read each other's thoughts and quickly glanced away, but for me so~ething had happened that I couldn't deny: I had looked at l;iuman flesh and instinc;tively recognized it as food. Once that door had been opened, it couldn't be closed, and from that moment on my mind was never far from the froz,en bodies under the snow. I knew those bodies represented our only chance for survival, but I was so horrified by what I was thinking that I kept my feelings quiet. But finally 1 couldn't stay silent any longer, and one night in the darkness of the fuselage, I decided to confide in Carlitos Paez, who was lying beside me in the dark. "Carlitos;' I whispered, "are you awake?" ''Yes,'' he muttered. "Who can sleep in this freezer?" i I Nando Parrado MIRACLE IN THE ANDES \ 97 "Puta carajo,'' he snapped. "What do you thlnkl I haven't eaten someone spoke up. "What are you saying?" he cried. "That we eat the dead?" 96 ''Are you hungry?" in days:' "We are going to starve here;' I_ said. "I don't think the rescuers will find us in time." "You don't know that," Carlitos answered. "I know it and you know it;' I replied, "but I will not die here. I will make it home:' ''Are you still thinking about climbing out of herel" he asked. "Nando, you are too weak." "I am weak because I haven't eaten}' "But what can you do?" he said. "There is no food here." "There is food;' I answered. "You know what I mean." Carlitos shifted in the darkness, but he said nothing. "I will cut meat from the pilot," I whispered. "He's the one who put us here, maybe he will help us get out" "Fuck, Nando," Carlitos whispered. "There is plenty of food here," I said, "but you must think of it only as meat. Our friends don't need their bodies anymore." Carlitos sat silently for a moment before speaking. "God help us:' he said softly. "I have been thinking the very same thing.. : In the following days, Carlitos shared our conversation with some of the others. A few, like Carlitos, admitted to having had the same thoughts. Roberto, Gustavo, and Fito especially believed it was our only chance to survive. For a few days we discussed the subject among ourselves, then we decided to call a _meeting and bring the issue out into the open. We all gathered inside the fuselage. It was late afternoon and the light was dim. Roberto began to speak. "We are starving," he said simply. "Our bodies are consuming themselves. Unless we eat some protein soon, we will die, and the only protein here is in the bodies of our friends." There was a heavy silence when Rolierto paused. Finally, "We don't know how long we will be trapped here:' Roberto continued. "If we do not eat, we will die. It's that simple. If you want to see your families again, this is what you must do:' The faces of the others showed astonishment as Roberto's words sa,nk in. Then Liliana spoke softly. "I cannot do that," she said. "I could never do that." "You won't do it for yourself," said Gustavo, "but you must do it for your children. You must survive and go home to them." "But what will this do to our soulsl" someone wondered. "Could God forgive such a thing?" "If you don't eat, you are choosing to die:' Roberto answered. "Would God forgive that? I believe God wants us to do whatever we can to survive." I decided to speak. "We must believe it is only meat now," I told them. "The souls are gone. If rescue is coming, we must buy time, or we will be dead when they find us." ' said Fito, "we will need strength or we will die on the slopes." "Fito is right," I said, "and if the bodies of our friends can help us to survive, then they haven't died for nothing:' The discussion continued all afternoon. Many of the survivorsLiliana, Javier, NUJ:11a Turcatti, and Coche Inciarte among others, refused to consider eating human flesh, but no one tried to talk the rest of us out of the idea. In the silence we realized we had reached a consensus. Now the grisly logistics had to be faced, "How will this be done!" asked Pancho Delgado. "Who is brave enough to cut the flesh from a friend?" The fuselage was dark now. I could see only dimly lit silhouettes, but after a long silence someone spoke. I recognized the voice as Roberto's. "I will do it," he said. 98 / Nanda Parrado Gustavo rose to his feet and said quietly, "I will help:' "But who will we cut first?" asked Fito. "How do we choose?" We all glanced at Roberto. "Gustavo and I will take care of that;' he replied. Fito got up. "I'll go with you," h~ said. "I'll help, too:' said Daniel Maspons, a wing forward.for the Old Christians and a good friend of Coco's. For a moment no one moved, then we all reached forward, joined hands, and pledged that if any of us died here, the rest would have permission to use our bodies for food. After the pledge, Roberto rose and rummaged in the fuselage until he found some shards of glass, then he led his three assistants out to the graves. I heard them speaking softly as they worked, but I had no interest in watching them. When they came back, they had small pieces of flesh in their hands. Gustavo offered me a piece and I toqk it. It was grayish white, as hard as wood and very cold. I reminded myself that this was no longer part of a human being; this person's soul had left his body. Still, I found myself slow to lift the meat to my lips. I avoided meeting anyone's gaze, but out of the corners of my eyes I saw the others around me. Some were sitting li).