Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors

by Piers Paul Read

  For that, finally, was their chief preoccupation and topic of conversation – their escape. The expedition was planned over and over again. Its equipment was discussed, designed and manufactured. The route was discussed by the whole group. There was never any doubt but that the expeditionaries were acting for them all and would follow the instructions of the majority. The more practical thought about how they could insulate the feet; the dreamers discussed what they would do when they got to Chile, deciding that they would telephone their parents in Montevideo to say that they were alive and then take the train to Mendoza. They thought that when they got back to Montevideo they might find a journalist who was interested in what they had been through, and they also planned to write a book for which Canessa chose the title ‘Maybe Tomorrow’, because they always hoped that something encouraging would take place the next day. At around nine o’clock, when the moon had disappeared over the horizon, they would stop talking and get ready for sleep. Carlitos would start the rosary, making the same intentions every night – for his father, his mother, and the peace of the world. After that Inciarte or Fernández would say the second mystery, and Algorta, Zerbino, Sabella, Harley or Delgado would share the rest. Most of them believed in God and their need of Him. They found great comfort, too, in praying to the Mother of God, as if she was in a better position to understand how much they longed to return to their families. They sometimes said the ‘Hail Holy Queen’, thinking of themselves as the ‘poor banished children of Eve’ and the valley in which they were trapped as the ‘vale of tears’. They were always frightened of another avalanche, especially when a storm blew outside the plane, and one night, when the winds were particularly violent, they prayed a rosary to the Virgin to protect them – and by the time they had finished, the storm had died down.

  Fito remained sceptical. He thought of the rosary as a sleeping pill – something which kept one’s mind off depressing subjects and sent one to sleep by its monotony. The others knew of his attitude, and one night they made use of it. The ground beneath the plane had started to tremble with the twitching of the Tinguiririca volcano, and all their terror returned that this movement would disturb the huge quantities of snow above them and send down an avalanche that would bury them forever. They thrust the rosary into Fito’s hands and told him to pray. The sceptic was as frightened as the believers. He said the rosary with the most specific intention that they might be saved from the volcano, and by the time he had finished the decade the rumbling had stopped.

  7

  There were two further matters which continually preoccupied them. The first was cigarettes. Parrado, Canessa and Vizintín were the only nonsmokers among them. Zerbino had not smoked before but had taken it up on the mountain. The rest were all heavy smokers, and because of the added stress of the conditions in which they were living they would all have liked to smoke even more than they were used to.

  It so happened that there was no real shortage of cigarettes. Javier Methol and Pancho Abal, who had both worked for a tobacco company and knew of the shortage of tobacco in Chile, had come loaded with cartons of Uruguayan cigarettes.

  All the same, there was rationing. One packet of twenty had to last each boy for two days and most managed to exercise sufficient control over themselves to space the ten cigarettes through the day. The feckless, however – especially Inciarte and Delgado – would finish their packet on the first day and find themselves with nothing to smoke on the second. Their only chance in such a situation was either to get their future ration in advance or to scrounge cigarettes from the more provident. It was in these conditions that Delgado would remember, say, what a good friend he was of Sabella’s brother, or Inciarte would invite Algorta to an especially delicious dinner when they returned to Montevideo.

  They would smoke their first cigarette of the day lying in the plane when they had just woken up. Then one boy would try and coax another out into the snow.

  ‘It looks lovely, why don’t you go out?’

  ‘Why don’t you?’

  Eventually one would rise, find his shoes, rub them together to thaw them out, put them on, and then pull away the cases and clothes with which Carlitos had blocked the entrance the night before. Each boy took some cushions with him, when the sun was shining, to dry them out on the roof. They would dry themselves out too, for they never changed their clothes or took them off but only added to them. The blankets would be piled onto the hammocks, and the last out of the cabin would have to tidy it up.

  In the course of the morning the cousins would set to work cutting meat from a body while others would take advantage of the hard surface of the snow to scavenge for discarded gobbets of fat and offal, or to go to a hole at the front of the plane and try to defecate.

  This was their second great preoccupation, because the diet upon which they were living – raw meat, fat and melted snow – gave rise to the most chronic constipation. Day after day, then week after week, would pass with nothing to show for the most strenuous efforts. Some began to fear that their intestines would split, and every method was used to facilitate the delivery of their faeces. Zerbino used a small stick to prise them out and Methol – one of the worst sufferers – swallowed oil that he scraped off the fat as a laxative. Carlitos used the same oil to make a laxative soup (when cooking) for himself and for Fito who, with his haemorrhoids, had special need of it.

  It was a wretched situation, not without its comic side. The boys began to place bets as to who would go last. There was an occasion when Moncho Sabella, crouched in the snow trying to defecate, said, ‘I can’t do it, I can’t do it.’

  Vizintín started to laugh at him – ‘You can’t do it, you can’t do it’ – whereupon Sabella made an extra effort, succeeded, and threw the rock-hard result at his tormentor.

  Javier Methol was one of the last. Day after day he sat over a cushion counting his money, waiting for his efforts to be rewarded, and when at last he succeeded, he announced his victory to the whole group and they applauded. That night, when he complained that he was uncomfortable, they all shouted him down. ‘Shut up,’ they said. ‘You crapped, so shut up.’

  The competition drew to a close. After twenty-eight days on the mountain, Páez managed to defecate; Delgado after thirty-two; and the last, Bobby Francois, after thirty-four.

  Ironically, this acute constipation was followed by an epidemic of diarrhoea. Their own diagnosis was that it came from eating too much fat, though it may well have resulted from their inadequate diet. Algorta never suffered from it and ascribed his immunity to the cartilage which he ate, in contrast to most of the others.

  It was a miserable addition to their afflictions. One night Canessa was taken short and came out of the plane to find half a dozen other figures crouching in the moonlight. This scene particularly depressed him – he thought it was the end of everything – and thereafter, though he continued to suffer from diarrhoea, he never came out but defecated onto a blanket on a rugby shirt inside the plane. This infuriated the others, but Canessa was cussed and stubborn and there was nothing they could do about it. Carlitos was especially angry because once, by accident, he picked up a shirt to block up the entrance and found it covered with Canessa’s ordure.

  Sabella suffered the worst attack of diarrhoea. It continued for some days and he got progressively weaker, until finally one night he grew delirious. The other boys became alarmed. Canessa advised him not to eat so much – and above all, not to eat any fat. Sabella, however, believed in consistency. He had always taken ten paces every day by way of exercise and felt that if he took one less it would be the start of an irreversible decline. For the same reason he thought it would be dangerous to deprive himself of food, but when the cousins saw that he was continuing to feed himself they cut off his ration and confined him to the plane.

  The next day Sabella went out to defecate and returned with the news that his diarrhoea was cured; but he had not taken account of Zerbino, who as doctor and detective had examined the evidence of this �
�cure’. He denounced Sabella to the others, who sent him back into the plane without his ration of fat.

  Much as he resented this treatment, it proved effective. He was cured of diarrhoea and later regained something of this strength.

  8

  As it drew nearer to the fifteenth of November, an atmosphere of excitement and anticipation grew up in the plane. There were repeated discussions of who would be the first to telephone their parents and how casual and blasé they would be about their escape. They also lingered over the meat pasties they would buy in Mendoza on their way back. From there they would take a bus to Buenos Aires and then a boat across the River Plate. As they reached each stage of the journey in their minds, they pondered on what they would eat. They knew that Buenos Aires had some of the best restaurants in the world, and they hoped that by the time they were on the boat their stomachs would be full enough for them to stop eating and buy presents for their families.

  The expeditionaries themselves were more preoccupied with the practical problems which faced them – especially protection against the cold. Each assembled three pairs of trousers, a T-shirt, two sweaters, and an overcoat. They had the three best pairs of dark glasses. Vizintín had those which belonged to the pilot; he also wore the pilot’s flying helmet. Canessa constructed knapsacks out of trousers. He tied nylon straps to the end of each leg, brought them around his shoulders, and threaded them through the belt holes. Vizintín made six pairs of mittens from the seat covers.

  They knew from earlier expeditions that the chief problem which would face them was the insulation of their feet against the cold. They had rugby boots, and Vizintín had prised from a reluctant Harley the stout shoes that Nicolich had been given by his novia, but they had no thick socks. Then they came up with the idea that they should provide their feet with an extra layer of fat and skin from the dead bodies outside. They found that if they made two incisions – one in the middle of the elbow, the other in the middle of the forearm – pulled away the skin with its subcutaneous layer of fat, and sewed up the lower end, they were left with a rudimentary pair of socks with the dead skin of the elbow fitting neatly over the live skin of the heel.*

  The only setback they suffered as the date of their departure approached was that someone stepped on Turcatti’s leg and the resulting bruise began to go septic. Numa, however, dismissed this as insignificant and at first no one was seriously concerned. Their minds were more on the route the expeditionaries were to take, for in assessing their position and therefore the direction they should go they were faced with two conflicting pieces of evidence. They knew from the dying words of the pilot that they had passed Curicó, that Curicó was in Chile, that Chile was to the west. They also knew, however, that all water flows to the sea; and the plane’s compass, which was still intact, showed that the valley they were in ran down to the east.

  The only answer that seemed to satisfy all the criteria was that the valley curved around the mountains to the northeast and doubled back on itself to run west. On this assumption the expeditionaries planned to set off down the valley, even though this would be walking away from Chile. The mountains behind them were so immense that there was no question of climbing over them. To go west they could only go east.

  The boys awoke early on the morning of November 15 and helped the expeditionaries to put on their equipment. It was snowing outside, but by seven o’clock the four had set out. Parrado had taken one of the small red shoes he had bought for his nephew and left the other hanging in the plane, saying to the others that he would be back to fetch it. He was back sooner than they thought. The snow got much worse, and after three hours they returned.

  There followed two days of weather as bad as any they had experienced, with a high wind and a blizzard blowing outside the plane. Pedro Algorta, who had told them all that summer set in on the fifteenth, became for a time the butt of their disappointment and hostility. And in those extra days that they waited Turcatti’s leg became worse. There were now two boils the size of hen’s eggs, and Canessa lanced them both to remove the pus. It was extremely, painful for Numa to walk on his septic leg, yet when Canessa told him that he was not fit to go on the expedition Numa became angry. He insisted that he was well enough, but it was clear to all that he would only hold them back, and he was obliged to accept the decision of the majority. On the morning of Friday, November 17, after five weeks on the mountain, they awoke to a clear blue sky. There was nothing now to stop the depleted force of expeditionaries. They filled their knapsacks with liver and meat (stuffed into rugby socks), a bottle of water, seat covers, and the travelling rug which Señora Parrado had brought with her on the plane.

  The others all trooped out of the plane to see them off, and when Parrado, Canessa and Vizintín had disappeared, over the first horizon they began to place bets on when they would reach civilization. They were sure they would all be in Montevideo in three weeks’ time, because they had planned in detail the party they would have for Parrado’s birthday on December 9 (including the dish each would bring), but they assumed their expeditionaries would reach Chile much sooner than that. Algorta thought it would be the following Tuesday; Turcatti and Francois the Wednesday. Six of them wagered on Thursday, from Mangino, who thought they would reach help at ten in the morning, to Carlitos, who put it at half past three. Harley, Zerbino and Fito Strauch bet on Friday; Echavarren and Methol on Saturday; and Moncho Sabella – the most pessimistic – estimated that they would reach civilization at twenty minutes past ten a week from Sunday.

  * Compare this with the expedient of their common forefather, the South American gaucho: ‘His boot (the bota de potro) was the hide stripped from a colt’s hind leg and pulled on to his own leg while still moist so that it dried to the appropriate shape, the upper part forming the boot’s leg, the hock fitting over the heel, and the remainder covering the foot, with an aperture for the big toe.’ George Pendle, Argentina (Oxford University Press, 1961).

  9

  Canessa led the expedition, pulling as a sledge half a Samsonite suitcase on which were piled the four rugby socks filled with meat, the bottle of water, and the cushions they would use as snowshoes when the sun melted the hard surface of the snow. Vizintín came next, loaded like a pack-horse with all the blankets, and Parrado brought up the rear.

  They made quick progress towards the northeast. They were going downhill and their rugby boots gripped well on the frozen snow. As they progressed, Canessa drew ahead, and after walking for two hours Parrado and Vizintín heard him shout and then saw him wave at them. He had stopped at the top of a crest of snow, and as they caught up with him Canessa said, ‘I’ve got a surprise for you.’

  ‘What?’ asked Parrado.

  ‘The tail.’

  Parrado and Vizintín reached the top of the hillock of snow and there indeed, a hundred yards ahead of them, was the tail of the Fairchild. It had lost both its wings but the cone itself was intact. What immediately excited their interest were the suitcases that they could see scattered around it. They ran over, opened them, and rummaged through their contents. It was like finding treasure; there were jeans, sweaters, socks, and Panchito Abal’s skiing kit. In Abal’s suitcase they also found a box of chocolates, from which they immediately ate four each but then decided to ration the rest.

  The three boys then stripped off the filthy garments they were wearing and changed into the warmest clothes they could find. Canessa and Parrado took off the stockings made of human skin and threw them aside. There were now plenty of good woollen socks, and they took three pairs each. Vizintín took four to pad out Nicolich’s boots, which were too big for him. He also took the balaclava which formed part of Abal’s skiing equipment, and Parrado took the boots.

  Next they went into the tail itself and found, in the galley, a packet of sugar and three Mendozan meat pasties. The latter they ate at once; the sugar they kept for later. Behind the galley there was a large dark luggage compartment in which there were more suitcases. They opened them all, pull
ing out the clothes and scattering them on the floor. In one they found a bottle of rum, and in many there were cartons of cigarettes.

  They searched for the plane’s batteries, which the mechanic Roque had told them were in the tail section, and found them through a small hatch on the outside of the plane. They also found more Coca-Cola crates and comic books, with which they made a fire. Canessa began to fry some of the meat they had brought with them, while Vizintín and Parrado continued to rummage inside the tail. They found some sandwiches wrapped in plastic which were mouldy, but they unwrapped them and salvaged what was edible. Then they ate the meat they had cooked and finished it off with a spoonful of sugar mixed with chlorophyll toothpaste in half an inch of rum. Never in their lives had a pudding tasted so delicious.

  The sun went behind the mountains and it began to grow cold. Vizintín and Parrado brought in all the clothes from around the tail and scattered them over the floor of the luggage compartment while Canessa traced the wires which led from the batteries and attached them to a light bulb he had taken from the galley. He connected it but the bulb burst. He tried another, and this time it lit up. The three then climbed into the luggage compartment, blocked up the door with suitcases and clothes, and lay back on the floor. Because of the light they could read comics before going to sleep. After the cramped conditions back at the plane, it was delightfully warm and comfortable. At nine Canessa disconnected the bulb. They had eaten well and now they slept soundly.