Miracle in the Andes

by Nando Parrado

  Copyright © 2006 by Nando Parrado

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  www.crownpublishing.com

  Crown is a trademark and the Crown colophon is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Parrado, Nando

  Miracle in the Andes : 72 days on the mountain and my long trek home / by Nando Parrado with Vince Rause.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  1. Survival after airplane accidents, shipwrecks, etc. 2. Aircraft accidents—Andes Region. 3. Cannibalism—Andes Region. 4. Parrado, Nando, 1949- 5. Aircraft accident victims—Uruguay—Biography. I. Rause, Vince.

  II. Title.

  TL553.9.P37 2006

  982′.6—dc22 2005021629

  eISBN: 978-0-307-34702-2

  Map on this page by Mapping Specialists, Ltd., Madison, WI; maps on this page and this page by David Cain

  v3.1

  To Veronique, Veronica, and Cecilia.

  It was all worth it. I would do it all again for you.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  Prologue

  Chapter One – Before

  Chapter Two – Everything Precious

  Chapter Three – A Promise

  Chapter Four – Breathe Once More

  Chapter Five – Abandoned

  Photo Insert

  Chapter Six – Tomb

  Chapter Seven – East

  Chapter Eight – The Opposite of Death

  Chapter Nine – “I See a Man …”

  Chapter Ten – After

  Epilogue

  A NOTE ON PHOTOGRAPHS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  About the Authors

  Prologue

  IN THE FIRST HOURS there was nothing, no fear or sadness, no sense of the passage of time, not even the glimmer of a thought or a memory, just a black and perfect silence. Then light appeared, a thin gray smear of daylight, and I rose to it out of the darkness like a diver swimming slowly to the surface. Consciousness seeped through my brain like a slow bleed and I woke, with great difficulty, into a twilight world halfway between dreaming and awareness. I heard voices and sensed motion all around me, but my thoughts were murky and my vision was blurred. I could see only dark silhouettes and pools of light and shadow. As I stared at those vague shapes in confusion, I saw that some of the shadows were moving, and finally I realized that one of them was hovering over me.

  “Nando, podés oírme? Can you hear me? Are you okay?”

  The shadow drew closer to me, and as I stared at it dumbly, it gathered itself into a human face. I saw a ragged tangle of dark hair and a pair of deep brown eyes. There was kindness in the eyes—this was someone who knew me—but behind the kindness was something else, a wildness, a hardness, a sense of desperation held in check.

  “Come on, Nando, wake up!”

  Why am I so cold? Why does my head hurt so badly? I tried desperately to speak these thoughts, but my lips could not form the words, and the effort quickly drained my strength. I closed my eyes and let myself drift back into the shadows. But soon I heard other voices, and when I opened my eyes, more faces were floating above me.

  “Is he awake? Can he hear you?”

  “Say something, Nando!”

  “Don’t give up, Nando. We are here with you. Wake up!”

  I tried again to speak, but all I could manage was a hoarse whisper. Then someone bent down close to me and spoke very slowly in my ear.

  “Nando, el avión se estrelló! Caímos en las montañas.”

  We crashed, he said. The airplane crashed. We fell into the mountains.

  “Do you understand me, Nando?”

  I did not. I understood, from the quiet urgency with which these words were spoken, that this was news of great importance. But I could not fathom their meaning, or seize the fact that they had anything to do with me. Reality seemed distant and muffled, as if I were trapped in a dream and could not force myself to wake. I hovered in this haze for hours, but at last my senses began to clear and I was able to survey my surroundings. Since my first bleary moments of awareness, I had been puzzled by a row of soft circular lights floating above me. Now I recognized these lights as the small rounded windows of an airplane. I realized that I was lying on the floor of the passenger cabin of a commercial aircraft, but as I looked forward to the cockpit, I saw that nothing about this aircraft seemed right. The fuselage had rolled to the side, so that my back and head were resting against the lower wall of the plane’s right side, while my legs stretched out into the upward-slanting aisle. Most of the plane’s seats were missing. Wires and pipes dangled from the damaged ceiling, and torn flaps of insulation hung like filthy rags from holes in the battered walls. The floor around me was strewn with chunks of shattered plastic, twisted scraps of metal, and other loose debris. It was daylight. The air was very cold, and even in my dazed state, the ferocity of the cold astonished me. I had lived all my life in Uruguay, a warm country, where even the winters are mild. My only real taste of winter had come when I was sixteen years old and was living as an exchange student in Saginaw, Michigan. I hadn’t brought any warm clothing with me to Saginaw, and I remember my first taste of a true Midwestern winter blast, how the wind cut through my thin spring jacket, and my feet turned to ice inside my lightweight moccasins. But never had I imagined anything like the bitter subzero gusts that blew through the fuselage. This was a savage, bone-crushing cold that scalded my skin like acid. I felt the pain in every cell of my body, and as I shivered spastically in its grip, each moment seemed to last an eternity.

  Lying on the drafty floor of the airplane, there was no way to warm myself. But the cold was not my only concern. There was also a throbbing pain in my head, a pounding so raw and ferocious it seemed that a wild animal had been trapped inside my skull and was clawing desperately to get out. Carefully I reached up to touch the crown of my head. Clots of dried blood were matted in my hair, and three bloody wounds formed a jagged triangle about four inches above my right ear. I felt rough ridges of broken bone beneath the congealed blood, and when I pressed down lightly I felt a spongy sense of give. My stomach heaved as I realized what this meant—I was pressing shattered pieces of my skull against the surface of my brain. My heart knocked against my chest. My breath came in shallow gasps. Just as I was about to panic, I saw those brown eyes above me, and at last I recognized the face of my friend Roberto Canessa.

  “What happened?” I asked him. “Where are we?”

  Roberto frowned as he bent down to examine the wounds on my head. He had always been a serious character, strong willed and intense, and as I looked into his eyes I saw all the toughness and confidence he was known for. But there was something new in his face, something shadowy and troubling that I hadn’t seen before. It was the haunted look of a man struggling to believe something unbelievable, of someone reeling from a staggering surprise.

  “You have been unconscious for three days,” he said, with no emotion in his voice. “We had given up on you.”

  These words made no sense. “What happened to me?” I asked, “Why is it so cold?”

  “Do you understand me, Nando?” said Roberto. “We crashed into the mountains. The airplane crashed. We are stranded here.”

  I shook my head feebly in confusion, or denial, but I could not deny for long what was happening around me. I heard soft moans and sudden cries of pain, and I began to understand that these were the sounds of other people suffering. I saw the injured lying in
makeshift beds and hammocks throughout the fuselage, and other figures bending down to help them, speaking softly to each other as they moved with quiet purpose back and forth through the cabin. I noticed, for the first time, that the front of my shirt was coated with a damp brown crust. The crust was sticky and clotted when I touched it with the tip of a finger, and I realized that this sad mess was my own drying blood.

  “Do you understand, Nando?” Roberto asked again. “Do you remember, we were in the plane … going to Chile …” I closed my eyes and nodded. I was out of the shadows now; my confusion could no longer shield me from the truth. I understood, and as Roberto gently washed the crusted blood from my face, I began to remember.

  Chapter One

  Before

  IT WAS FRIDAY, the thirteenth of October. We joked about that—flying over the Andes on such an unlucky day, but young men make those kinds of jokes so easily. Our flight had originated one day earlier in Montevideo, my hometown, its destination Santiago, Chile. It was a chartered flight on a Fairchild twin-engine turboprop carrying my rugby team—the Old Christians Rugby Club—to play an exhibition match against a top Chilean squad. There were forty-five people aboard, including four crew members—pilot, copilot, mechanic, and steward. Most of the passengers were my teammates, but we were also accompanied by friends, family members, and other supporters of the team, including my mother, Eugenia, and my younger sister, Susy, who were sitting across the aisle and one row in front of me. Our original itinerary was to fly nonstop to Santiago, a trip of about three and a half hours. But after just a few hours of flying, reports of bad weather in the mountains ahead forced the Fairchild’s pilot, Julio Ferradas, to put the plane down in the old Spanish colonial town of Mendoza, which lies just east of the Andean foothills.

  We landed in Mendoza at lunchtime with hopes that we would be back in the air in a few hours. But the weather reports were not encouraging, and it was soon clear that we would have to stay the night. None of us liked the idea of losing a day from our trip, but Mendoza was a charming place, so we decided to make the best of our time there. Some of the guys relaxed in sidewalk cafés along Mendoza’s broad, tree-lined boulevards or went sightseeing in the city’s historic neighborhoods. I spent the afternoon with some friends watching an auto race at a track outside of town. In the evening we went to a movie, while some of the others went dancing with some Argentinean girls they had met. My mother and Susy spent their time exploring Mendoza’s quaint gift shops, buying presents for friends in Chile and souvenirs for the people at home. My mother was especially pleased to find a pair of red baby shoes in a small boutique, which she thought would make the perfect gift for my sister Graciela’s new baby boy.

  Most of us slept late the next morning, and when we woke we were anxious to leave, but there was still no word about our departure, so we all went our separate ways to see a little more of Mendoza. Finally we received word to gather at the airport at 1:00 p.m. sharp, but we arrived only to discover that Ferradas and his copilot, Dante Lagurara, had not yet decided whether or not we would fly. We reacted to this news with frustration and anger, but none of us understood the difficult decision confronting the pilots. The weather reports that morning warned of some turbulence along our flight path, but after speaking with the pilot of a cargo plane that had just flown in from Santiago, Ferradas was confident the Fairchild could fly safely above the weather. The more troubling problem was the time of day. It was already early afternoon. By the time the passengers were boarded and all the necessary arrangements were made with airport officials, it would be well past two o’clock. In the afternoon, warm air rises from the Argentine foothills and meets the frigid air above the snowline to create treacherous instability in the atmosphere above the mountains. Our pilots knew that this was the most dangerous time to fly across the Andes. There was no way to predict where these swirling currents might strike, and if they got hold of us, our plane would be tossed around like a toy.

  On the other hand, we couldn’t stay put in Mendoza. Our aircraft was a Fairchild F-227 that we had leased from the Uruguayan air force. The laws of Argentina forbade a foreign military aircraft to stay on Argentine soil longer than twenty-four hours. Since our time was almost up, Ferradas and Lagurara had to make a fast decision: should they take off for Santiago and brave the afternoon skies, or fly the Fairchild back to Montevideo and put an end to our vacation?

  As the pilots pondered the options, our impatience grew. We had already lost a day of our Chilean trip, and we were frustrated by the thought of losing more. We were bold young men, fearless and full of ourselves, and it angered us that our vacation was slipping away because of what we regarded as the timidity of our pilots. We did not hide these feelings. When we saw the pilots at the airport, we jeered and whistled at them. We teased them and questioned their competence. “We hired you to take us to Chile,” someone shouted, “and that’s what we want you to do!” There is no way to know whether or not our behavior influenced their decision—it did seem to unsettle them—but finally, after one last consultation with Lagurara, Ferradas glanced around at the crowd waiting restlessly for an answer, and announced that the flight to Santiago would continue. We greeted this news with a rowdy cheer.

  The Fairchild finally departed from Mendoza Airport at eighteen minutes after two o’clock, local time. As we climbed, the plane banked steeply into a left turn and soon we were flying south, with the Argentine Andes rising to our right on the western horizon. Through the windows on the right side of the fuselage, I gazed at the mountains, which thundered up from the dry plateau below us like a black mirage, so bleak and majestic, so astonishingly vast and huge, that the simple sight of them made my heart race. Rooted in massive swells of bedrock with colossal bases that spread for miles, their black ridges soared up from the flatlands, one peak crowding the next, so that they seemed to form a colossal fortress wall. I was not a poetically inclined young man, but there seemed to be a warning in the great authority with which these mountains held their ground, and it was impossible not to think of them as living things, with minds and hearts and an old brooding awareness. No wonder the ancients thought of these mountains as holy places, as the doorstep to heaven, and as the dwelling place of the gods.

  Uruguay is a low-lying country, and like most of my friends on the plane, my knowledge of the Andes, or of any mountains at all, was limited to what I had read in books. In school we learned that the Andes range was the most extensive mountain system in the world, running the length of South America from Venezuela in the north to the southern tip of the continent in Tierra del Fuego. I also knew that the Andes are the second-highest mountain range on the planet; in terms of average elevation, only the Himalayas are higher.

  I had heard people refer to the Andes as one of the earth’s great geological wonders, and the view from the airplane gave me a visceral understanding of what that meant. To the north, south, and west, the mountains sprawled as far as the eye could see, and even though they were many miles away, their height and mass made them seem impassable. In fact, as far as we were concerned, they were. Our destination, Santiago, lies almost exactly due west of Mendoza, but the region of the Andes that separates the two cities is one of the highest sections of the entire chain, and home to some of the tallest mountains in the world. Somewhere out there, for example, was Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the Western Hemisphere and one of the seven tallest on the planet. With a summit of 22,831 feet, it stands just 6,200 feet shy of Everest, and it has giants for neighbors, including the 22,000-foot Mount Mercedario, and Mount Tupongato, which stands 21,555 feet tall. Surrounding these behemoths are other great peaks with elevations of between 16,000 and 20,000 feet, which no one in those wild reaches had ever bothered to name.

  With such towering summits rising along the way, there was no chance that the Fairchild, with its maximum cruising altitude of 22,500 feet, could fly a direct east-west route to Santiago. Instead, the pilots had charted a course that would take us about one hundred miles
south of Mendoza to Planchón Pass, a narrow corridor through the mountains with ridges low enough for the plane to clear. We would fly south along the eastern foothills of the Andes with the mountains always on our right, until we reached the pass. Then we’d turn west and weave our way through the mountains. When we had cleared the mountains on the Chilean side, we would turn right and fly north to Santiago. The flight should take about an hour and a half. We would be in Santiago before dark.

  On this first leg of the trip, the skies were calm, and in less than an hour we had reached the vicinity of Planchón Pass. I didn’t know the name of the pass, of course, or any of the flight details. But I couldn’t help noticing that after flying for miles with the mountains always off in the western distance, we had banked to the west and were now flying directly into the heart of the cordillera. I was sitting in a window seat on the left side of the plane, and as I watched, the flat, featureless landscape below seemed to leap up from the earth, first to form rugged foothills, then heaving and buckling up into the awesome convolutions of true mountains. Shark-finned ridges raised themselves up like soaring black sails. Menacing peaks pushed up like gigantic spearheads or the broken blades of hatchets. Narrow glacial valleys gashed the steep slopes, forming rows of deep, winding, snow-packed corridors that stacked and folded one upon the other to create a wild, endless maze of ice and rock. In the Southern Hemisphere, winter had given way to early spring, but in the Andes, temperatures still routinely dipped to 35 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, and the air was as dry as a desert. I knew that avalanches, blizzards, and killing gale-force winds were common in these mountains, and that the previous winter had been one of the most severe on record, with snowfalls, in some places, of several hundred feet. I saw no color at all in the mountains, just muted patches of black and gray. There was no softness, no life, only rock and snow and ice and as I looked down into all that rugged wildness, I had to laugh at the arrogance of anyone who had ever thought that human beings have conquered the earth.