Nando Parrado - Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home

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 accidentsAndes Region. 3. CannibalismAndes Region. 4. Parrado, Nando, 1949- 5. Aircraft accident victimsUruguayBiography. I. Rause, Vince.
II. Title.
TL553.9.P37 2006
982.6dc22 2005021629

eISBN: 978-0-307-34702-2

Map on by David Cain

v3.1

To Veronique, Veronica, and Cecilia.

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

I N 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, pods orme? 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 eyesthis was someone who knew mebut 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!

Dont 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 avin se estrell! Camos en las montaas.

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 planes right side, while my legs stretched out into the upward-slanting aisle. Most of the planes 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 hadnt 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 meantI 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 hadnt 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.