Miracle in the Andes Read online

  When we woke, it was early evening. Armando and Enrique had another meal waiting for us—more cheese and milk, a stew of meat and beans, plus sweet caramel dulce de leche spread on bread, and hot coffee.

  “We’re emptying your pantry,” I joked, but the two peasants only laughed and urged us to eat more. After eating, we all relaxed together around the fire. Armando and Enrique listened in fascination as Roberto and I told the story of our ordeal, but we were soon interrupted by the sight of two Chilean policemen running up the trail to the hut, followed soon after by a patrol of ten more policemen on horseback. Riding with the police was Sergio Catalan. When he dismounted, Roberto and I rushed forward and embraced him. “There is no need to thank me,” he said quietly, and as we hugged him he only whispered, “Thank God, thank God.”

  When the captain of the mounted police introduced himself, I explained that fourteen more survivors were waiting at the crash site. He asked for their names, but I refused to give them. “Some of them were near death when we left them,” I explained. “I’m afraid some may have died. If you release their names, it will give their parents false hope, then they will have to lose their sons a second time.”

  The captain understood. “Where is the plane?” he asked. I looked at Roberto. It was clear the captain did not understand how difficult this rescue would be, but when we described our ten-day odyssey, and the approximate location of the crash site, he quickly realized his patrol could not reach the crash site on horseback.

  “I’ll send some men back to Puente Negro,” he said, “and have them radio for a helicopter from Santiago.”

  “How long will that take?” I asked.

  “They could be here tomorrow,” he said, “if the weather is clear.”

  My concern for the survivors at the crash site was increasing with every passing moment, but we had no choice now except to wait. We talked for a while with Enrique and Armando, and some of the police. Then I went to bed. I spent a restless night in the sleeping hut, anxious for morning, but when I woke and went outside, I was distressed to see that a heavy fog had descended upon Los Maitenes.

  “Do you think they can land in this?” I asked Roberto.

  “Maybe it will burn off soon,” he replied.

  Enrique and Armando had breakfast waiting for us at the fire. Sergio and some of the policemen joined us, and as we were eating we heard the noise of an approaching crowd. Within seconds we were shocked to see a horde of reporters running up the dirt road toward the hut. They rushed forward when they spotted us.

  “Are those the survivors?” they shouted. “Roberto? Fernando?” Now cameras were snapping, microphones were jabbed in our faces, and newspaper reporters were scribbling on notepads and shouting questions over one another’s voices.

  “How long did you trek?”

  “Who else is alive?”

  “How did you survive the cold? What did you eat?”

  I looked at Roberto in amazement. “How did they find us,” I muttered, “and how did they get here before the helicopters?”

  We found ourselves surrounded by journalists from newspapers and television stations all over the world. Their unexpected arrival startled us, and we were rattled a little by the intensity of their questioning, but we tried our best to answer their inquiries, though we kept the more sensitive facts to ourselves. The captain of the mounted police allowed the interviews to continue for a while, then he took us aside.

  “The fog is still heavy,” he told us. “I don’t think the helicopters will come today. I’m going to send you down to Puente Negro to wait for the rescue team to arrive. It might be easier for them to land there.”

  We nodded, and in moments Roberto and I were on horseback, following two of the mounted policemen down the trail, with the press in hot pursuit. Suddenly the entire noisy entourage came to a stop and gazed up at the overcast sky. There was commotion above us, the thunder of powerful engines and a roar of wind. The fog was still so thick that we couldn’t see the helicopters land, but on horseback we followed the noise to a spot about four hundred yards away, a flat meadow near the huts, where three huge helicopters of the Chilean air force had just set down.

  We dismounted from the horses as medics and crew members leaped out of the helicopters and came forward to examine us. Roberto needed their attention badly, but I refused to be examined. Instead, I sought out two of the helicopter pilots, Carlos Garcia and Jorge Massa, and tried to impress upon them the importance of leaving right away.

  Commander Garcia shook his head. “There’s no way we can fly in this fog,” he said. “We have to wait for it to lift. In the meantime, what can you tell me about the location of the plane?”

  Once again I described our trek through the Andes. Garcia gave me a skeptical frown, then retrieved a flight chart from the helicopter and spread it on the grass. “Do you think you can show me on the map?” he asked. He jabbed his finger at the chart and said, “We are here.” I stared at the map for a moment, and once I got my bearings, it was easy to trace in reverse the route Roberto and I had followed.

  “Here,” I said, tapping the map where the valley ended at the foot of the peak I had christened Mount Seler. “They are on the far side of this mountain.”

  Massa and Garcia exchanged dubious glances.

  “That’s Argentina,” Garcia said. “The High Andes. That’s more than seventy miles from here.”

  “We have to hurry,” I said. “Our friends are dying.”

  Massa frowned at Garcia. “He’s confused,” he said. “They couldn’t have crossed the Andes on foot! Impossible!”

  “Are you sure you understand this map?” Garcia asked me.

  “I am sure of it,” I said. “We came down this mountain, along this valley. Here is where the valley splits, and we followed this fork and it brought us here! The plane is lying there, just beyond this mountain, on a glacier above a wide valley that goes east.”

  Garcia nodded and folded the map. I was still not sure he believed me.

  “When will you go for them?” I asked.

  “As soon as the fog lifts, we will take off,” he said, then he and Massa walked off with their heads together, and I knew they were discussing my account of the trek and how much of it they should believe.

  Three hours later the fog still persisted, but it had thinned a little and the pilots now thought it was safe to fly. As the crews prepared for takeoff, Garcia approached me. “We’re going to go now,” he said. “But the location you showed us is in a very high and remote section of the Andes. Flying there will be very difficult, and with no landmarks, we will never find your friends in all those mountains. Do you think you can come with us, and guide us to the plane?”

  I don’t remember how I answered him, or if I answered him at all, but in seconds I felt arms all over me as I was lifted into the helicopter and strapped into a jumpseat in the cargo area. Someone slipped a seat of headphones over my ears, and positioned the tip of the small attached microphone close to my mouth. Three members of the Andean Rescue Corps climbed in beside me. The copilot sat in front of me, and Commander Garcia took the controls. As Garcia revved the engines, I looked out the window and saw Roberto, the only one who could understand how frightened I was to be flying back into the Andes. He didn’t wave; we just exchanged glances. Then the helicopter lurched into the air and my stomach dropped as we banked hard and swooped off to the east and into the mountains. At first my earphones crackled with technical chatter as the pilot and mechanic began to set our course, then Garcia spoke to me.

  “Okay, Nando,” he said, “show us the way.”

  I guided them into the valley and we followed it across the Chilean border and into the Argentine Andes, with a second helicopter, piloted by commander Massa, close on our tail. The air was turbulent, and the helicopter danced and bobbed like a speedboat on rough water, but the flight was short—in less than twenty minutes we were hovering at the eastern end of the valley where the massive bulk of Mount Seler towered above us l
ike the walls of a gigantic fortress.

  “Holy Jesus,” someone muttered.

  Garcia let the helicopter hover as he gazed up to the mountain’s snow-capped peak and down the black slopes plunging to the floor of the valley, several thousand feet below.

  “Mother of God,” he said, “you didn’t come down this?”

  “Yes,” I said, “this is the way.”

  “Are you sure?” he said. “Are you certain?”

  “I’m certain,” I said. “They’re on the other side.”

  Garcia looked at his copilot. “With so many people, we’re heavy,” the copilot said. “I don’t know if we have the power to clear that mountain.”

  Garcia asked again. “Nando, are you absolutely certain this is the way?”

  I barked into the microphone, “I am!”

  Garcia nodded. “Hold on,” he said. I felt the copter surge forward as the pilots gunned the engines. We raced at the face of the mountain, gathering speed, and then, slowly, the copter began to climb. As we flew closer to the mountains, we were battered by the swirling air rushing up from the slopes. Garcia fought for control as the helicopter lurched wildly from side to side. The engines screamed, the windshield rattled in its frame, and my seat shook so violently it blurred my vision. It seemed that every bolt and rivet in the aircraft was being pushed beyond its limits, and I was certain the aircraft would soon shake itself to bits. I had seen this kind of mechanical chaos before, in the moments just before the Fairchild slammed into a ridge, and seeing it again, I felt panic rising in my throat like vomit. Garcia and the copilot were barking commands so rapidly I couldn’t tell who was speaking.

  “The air is too thin! There’s not enough lift.”

  “Come on, push it!”

  “One hundred percent, one hundred ten …”

  “Keep it level! Keep it level!”

  I glanced at the rescue team, hoping for a sign from them that any of this was normal, but their faces were drawn and pale. Garcia continued to push the engines, battling for every foot of altitude, and finally he managed to force the copter above the mountain’s summit, but no sooner had we cleared the top than the strong air currents streaming over the ridge threw us back violently, and Garcia had no choice but to let the copter fall away in a long, swooping circle to keep the craft from being dashed against the slopes. As we fell, I began to scream, and I kept screaming as we swung around and made one more assault on the summit, only to be pushed back in the same terrifying fashion.

  “We can’t make it over this mountain,” Garcia announced. “We’ll have to find a way around it. This is a life-threatening mission now, and I won’t go forward unless everyone on board volunteers. I’ll leave it to all of you. Shall we continue or go back?”

  I exchanged glances with the others on board, then we turned to the captain and nodded. “Okay,” he said, “but hold on, it will be rough going.” My stomach pitched again as we banked to the right and flew over some lower peaks just south of Mount Seler. It was the only route open to us, but we were veering off the path Roberto and I had followed now, and I quickly lost my bearings over the unfamiliar landscape below.

  “Which way?” Garcia demanded.

  “I’m not sure … I’m all turned around …”

  I scanned the horizon, searching frantically for a point of reference, terrified that my friends were now hopelessly lost. Everywhere I looked I saw repetition and sameness, just an endless ocean of white snow and black rock.… Then something in the jagged profile of one of the ridges caught my eye.

  “Wait!” I shouted. “I know that mountain! I know where we are! Go down!”

  As we dropped lower into the mountains, I realized that Garcia had found his way around the mountains that bordered the crash site to the south. We were above the valley that we had trekked through on our attempts to escape to the east, and climbing west toward the eastern face of Mount Seler.

  “They must be up there,” I said, pointing east.

  “I don’t see anything,” said the pilot.

  “Keep going!” I said. “They’re on the glacier!”

  “The wind is bad!” said the copilot. “I don’t know if we can land here.”

  I stared at the slopes, and suddenly I spotted it, a faint dot in the snow. “I see the plane!” I shouted. “There, on the left.”

  Garcia scanned the slopes. “Where … I can’t see anything. Wait, okay, I see it. Shut up now, everyone shut up!”

  In moments we were circling high above the crash site, and my heart pounded as Garcia battled strong turbulence above the glacier, but my fears faded as I saw a line of tiny figures coming out of the fuselage. Even from that altitude I could make some of them out—I recognized Gustavo from his pilot’s cap, Daniel, Pedro, Fito, Javier … There were others, running, waving. I tried to count them, but the lurching of the helicopter made it impossible. I could see no sign of Roy or Coche, the ones who worried me the most.

  I heard Garcia’s voice in the headphones, speaking to the rescue team. “The slope is too steep for a landing,” he said. “I’m going to hover as low as I can. You’ll have to jump out.” Then he turned his attention to the dicey business of bringing the helicopter down safely in the swirling winds.

  “Shit! This turbulence is bad. Keep it level.”

  “Watch the slope, we’re too close!”

  “Keep it level!”

  “Easy now …”

  He turned the copter so that one side faced up the slope, then eased it down until one of its skis just touched the snow. “Go!” he shouted. The rescuers threw open the sliding door, tossed their gear out onto the mountain, and jumped out beneath the whirling blades. I looked out and saw Daniel running toward us. He ducked under the blades and tried to dive into the helicopter, but he misjudged his leap and slammed his chest against one of the copter’s skis.

  “Carajo!” he shouted. “I think I broke my ribs.”

  “Don’t kill yourself now!” I cried. Then I reached down and pulled him inside. Alvaro Mangino climbed in after him.

  “That’s all we can take,” shouted Garcia. “We’ll get the rest tomorrow. Now close the door!” I obeyed the captain’s orders, and in seconds we were hovering above the crash site as the second helicopter dropped down and more rescuers leaped out onto the mountain. I saw Carlitos, Pedro, and Eduardo climb into the waiting aircraft. Then I saw the emaciated figure of Coche Inciarte limping toward the copter.

  “Coche is alive!” I said to Daniel. “How is Roy?”

  “Alive,” said Daniel, “but barely.”

  The flight back to Los Maitenes was just as harrowing as the earlier trip, but in less than twenty minutes we had landed safely in the meadow near the peasants’ hut. As soon as the doors were opened, Daniel and Alvaro were whisked away by the medics. In moments the second helicopter set down about thirty yards away, and I was there as the doors slid open. Coche fell out happily into my arms, then Eduardo and Carlitos. Amazed to see flowers and greenery again, some of them fell to their knees in the grass. Others embraced and rolled about on the ground in each other’s arms. Carlitos wrapped his arms around me and wrestled me to the ground. “You bastard!” he cried. “You made it! You made it!” Then he reached into his pocket and drew out the little red shoe I had given him when I left the fuselage. He was beaming at me, his eyes lit with joy and his face only inches from mine.

  “I’m happy to see you, Carlitos,” I said, “but please, you aren’t going to kiss me, are you?”

  When the celebration ended, they brought us hot soup, cheese, and chocolates. While the medics examined the six new arrivals, I found Commander Garcia and asked when the rest of the survivors would be taken off the mountain. He explained that it would be too dangerous to fly into the mountains at night. Rescue would have to wait another day. But he assured me that the medics and the rescue workers who had stayed on the mountain would make sure all the boys were safe.

  After we all were fed, we were loaded into the helicopters and f
lown to a military base near the town of San Fernando. Teams of doctors and nurses were there to help us into waiting ambulances. The ambulances left in a convoy, escorted by police on motorcycles, and in about ten minutes we had reached St. John of God hospital in San Fernando. Hospital personnel met us in the parking lot with gurneys. Some of the guys needed this help, but I told the nurses I would walk. After hiking across the Andes, I was not about to let them carry me the last few yards.

  They led me to a small, clean room and began peeling off layers of filthy clothing from my body. They threw the dirty rags into a corner and I saw them lying there—the sweaters, jeans, and slacks that had been my second skin. It felt good to shed them, and put them in my past. I was taken into the bathroom and given a warm shower. I felt hands washing my hair and a soft cloth scrubbing the dirt from my skin. When the shower was over, they dried me with soft towels, and then I caught sight of myself in the bathroom’s full-length mirror. My jaw dropped when I saw what I had become. Before the crash, I had been an athlete in training, but now there was not a trace of muscle anywhere on my frame. The bones of my ribs, hips, and shoulder blades showed through the skin, and my arms and legs had withered so close to the bone that my knees and elbows bulged like thick knots tied in a rope. The nurses steered me from the mirror and dressed me in a fresh hospital gown, then led me to a narrow bed and began to examine me, but I asked them to leave me alone for a while. When they’d all left, I quietly rejoiced in the comfort and cleanliness and peace of the pleasant little room. I lay back on the soft mattress, felt the smoothness of the crisp cotton sheets. Slowly I let it sink in: I was safe; I was going to go home. I drew a long breath and then slowly, richly, I exhaled. Breathe once more, we used to say on the mountain, to encourage each other in moments of despair. As long as you breathe, you are alive. In those days, each breath was almost an act of defiance. In my seventy-two days in the Andes, there had not been a single breath that wasn’t taken in fear. Now, at last, I enjoyed the luxury of ordinary breathing. Again and again, I filled my lungs, then let the air out in long, unhurried exhalations, and with each breath I whispered to myself in amazement: