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>> [Nando] My name s Nando Parrado.

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I was one of the 16 survivors of flight 571,

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which crashed in the Andes mountains on Friday the 13th of October of 1972.

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We knew a plane cannot fly that close to the mountains,

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and I looked towards my mother and that was the moment of impact.

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I was in a very deep coma.

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So, you wake up very slowly, and I woke up in hell.

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We waited for a rescue, but it didn't come.

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Our plane that crashes in the middle of the mountains in the snow season there is no way people can survive.

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And after a week, after ten days, after three weeks, after a month, after two months --

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who would believe there was people alive.

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The decision of eating the dead bodies of our friends started to creap into our minds at the same time.

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We all had the same fear -- the same lack of hope -- the same confirmation that we were dead.

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I decided that I was going to die, but I was gong to die trying.

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Initially, the trip was planned for four days.

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We would leave on Thursday, and we would come back on Monday morning.

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You are young.

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You don't have that much money,

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and the easiest way and the cheapest one was the charter an air force plane.

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The night before the plane left for Santiago,

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the captian of the team told us that there was ten seats available on the airplane,

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and if anybody wanted to bring family or friends, they could go for free.

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So, I jumped from my seat and I phoned my mother.

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I said, "Mom, prepare a bag, you are going to Chile tomorrow."

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And tell Susie -- Susie was my sister -- that she was going too.

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Susie was 17-years-old, I remember, and she always was running around my rugby teammates,

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because, you know, rugby players -- that's how simply they happened.

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I wanted to give them a present of love to invite them to go to Chile with us.

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They would shop and have a nice time.

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We would come back on Monday,

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but it never happened like that.

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We left on Thursday,

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but when the plane came close to the Andes the weather was not good,

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so it had to land in Mendoza.

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The last seat in Argentina before the Andes,

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and we had to wait for the weather to be better so that the plane could cross.

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So, we had to sleep in Mendoza that night.

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And the next morning we went to the airport,

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and we boarded the plane,

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and we left finally on Friday morning for Santiago.

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Nothing made us think or believe that something terrible was going to happen.

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Friday the 13th.

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I'm not a superstitious person,

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and I don't care about that, but I didn't know Friday the 13th, and I would crash on that day.

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You know, some guys think about it and some guys don't.

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Obviously, the pilot didn't think about it too much.

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How could a pilot make such a big mistake -- a pilot with experience.

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>> [Male Speaker] The captain on this flight was a Uruguayan Air Force colonel,

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and that implies that he was an experienced pilot.

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I know that he had 29 crossings of the Andes,

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which is a lot.

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However, his total time -- his total flight experience was in the range of 5,200 hours.

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In today's standards, 5,200 hours is not a lot of time.

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>> [Col Enrique Crosa] The training by the crew was done acording to international standards.

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It was in a good condition to fly that plane without any problems.

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>> [Male Speaker] The Fairchild had a max gross takeoff weight of 45,000 pounds,

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and carried anywhere between 45 and 50 passengers.

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The engines that it had were two Rolls Royce Dart 7 engines,

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which are approximately 1,725 shaft horse power each

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The aircraft struggled because it was under powered.

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We pretty much referred to it as a lead sled.

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Of the 78 Fairchild 227's built 23 crashed,

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and there were a total of 393 fatalities.

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A third of them have been involved in accidents,

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which equtes to not a very good safety record.

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>> [Nando] At the time, we didn't know that the safety record of that model was absolutely horrible.

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Had we known that, we would have never got into that airplane.

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After takeoff from Mendoza, the captain elected to fly south and make a turn towards the Planchon Pass,

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and the reason he elected to do this is

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because he could fly the aircraft through a pass and at a lower altitude.

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If he had led to stricly go over the Andes,

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he would have had to go a lot higher,

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which would have been a lot more stressful on this aircraft.

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It has a hard enough time getting up to 1,500 to 1,600 feet,

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let alone what it needed to get over the Andes without going through a pass.

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>> [Male Speaker] The Andes Mountains rise so abruptly that they create very serious storms.

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If the jet stream is coming from the Pacific, all this moist air gets funneled by the mountains.

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That speeds up winds and creates precipitation --

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creates clouds, so the storms that can be formed by the Andes can be very fierce.

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This was a team of friends -- a team of young people flying to have a fantastic fun weekend.

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So, the mood in the airplane was absolutely happy.

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I remember people laughing -- people talking.

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You know sitting, kneeling down on the seats, and looking back and talking with the guys.

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>> [Gustavo] We were all singing.

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We were all super happy, throwing the ball from one side to the other.

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It was quite a fun atmosphere.

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>> [Nado] Initially, I sat on the window,

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but Ponchito was my best friend.

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He was like my brother,

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and he said, "You have been for a long time on the window let me look down.

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It is easier for me if I'm on the window to look out,"

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So, we changed seats.

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He sat on the window,

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and I sat on the isle.

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That's one of those moments in life that without thinking that

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would decide who would live and who would die.

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>> [Male Speaker] There was a cloud cover on the mountains,

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so they had to cross the Andes,

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and they radio Santiago and they want permission to turn north,

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and they fly it north to Santiago.

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>> [Male Speaker] The Fairchild was expectd to arrive at Curico at 3:33 p.m.,

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but reported that it was over Curico at 3:24.

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That distance is usually covered in 11 minutes,

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and they reported that they covered it in 3 minutes.

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Surely, the plane was still in the middle of the mountains.

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>> [Male Speaker] So, the pilot's obviously made a mistake at some point in calculation.

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It's actually they are right in the middle of the range,

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and they are thinking they are already past it.

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He makes the unexplained and catastrophic decision of turning north into the Andes.

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This changes the fate of all the passengers on the plane.

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>> [Roberto Canessa] So, he decided to descend,

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and as it was all covered by clouds,

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he didn't see that the mountains were under the clouds.

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>> [Male Speaker] When a pilot gets into a position where he is not where expects to be,

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or not where he thinks he is,

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in order to get out of that situation,

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he has to convince himself that he's made a mistake,

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and it's a different mindset.

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You have to now think, "I've made a mistake. How am I going to get out of this.

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>> [Col Enrique] The cause of the accident was clearly human error.

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The fault of the crew.

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>> [Nado] We started to get into some light --

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not very heavy turbulance.

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The plane started to shake a little.

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>> [Carlitos] The flight attendant came out into the cabin and said,

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"Put your seat belts on because the plane is going to dance a little bit."

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>> [Nado] And then we got into a little bit heavier turbulence,

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and the move changed a little bit.

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Nobody was throwing balls.

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You know, everybody was sitting on the seat with the seat belt fastened.

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>> [Male Speaker] They head down through the clouds,

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and they think they are descending into Chile.

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And, of course, as you get closer to the mountains,

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there is the turbulence of all the wind currents that the mountains create.

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So, they start shaking.

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They come from off the cloud cover,

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and realize that they are completely surrounded by rocks and mountains.

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>> [Male Speaker] It was a feeling of fear,

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and the fear transformed into panic.

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We felt the acceleration of the engine.

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>> [Nado] I only had abut five or six or seven seconds to understand that there was something wrong.

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That we were going to crash.

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The last image that I had is the top of the airplane --

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the roof over my head opened and I died.

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>> [Male Speaker] The plane begins sliding down at a tremendous speed,

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and I was waiting for it to slam against the mountain,

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but it stopped.

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And when it stopped, I thought "I'm alive."

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>> [Male Speaker] I stood in the impact site and realized that there is a saddle there.

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The pilots must have seen that saddle and gone for it to try to overcome the mountains.

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A little to the left or a little to the right they would have hit cliffs and the plane would have disintegrated.

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>> [Male Speaker] It was an extraordinary piece of luck,

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I would say, that the plane didn't disintegrate all together when it hit the mountain.

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Really it clipped off the back of it,

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and then the front tobogganed down the mountain.

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That was astonishing.

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>> The fuselage ended up landing on this very steep gully.

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It was all covered in snow, luckily for them,

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which allowed the fuselage to slide down,

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make a couple turns that are just the natural fall line,

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and lead them all the way to the bottom of the glacier.

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It is and extremely lucky situation.

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>> [Male Speaker] I think one must be careful when one uses the word miraculous.

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I mean, you've got to think of the people who didn't make it,

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and who died, and who were eaten.

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I mean it obviously wasn't miraculous to the parents of those boys.

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>> [Male Speaker] This is one of the seat arm rests,

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and I found it high on the mountain.

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This belonged, obviously to one of the seats that flew out the back of the fuselage.

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It was, obviously, very chilling to think of somebody was riding on that seat.

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It is a testament to a very tragic moment.

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>> [Male Speaker] None of us were familiar with snow.

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We were like little boys.

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In Uruguay, the maximum amount of is 500 meters,

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so we knew nothing.

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It was a disaster:

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Dead people, injured people, people with broken legs.

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>> Immediately after the plane crashed,

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we went about attending to the wounded.

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I went over to Nando's mother,

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and I touched her, and she was dead.

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>> She was like wrapped around a seat in a position that I was sure that she was not alive.

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>> Nando's condition for us was a dead body.

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>> He had flown from the back seat to the front seat,

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and his face was very swollen,

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and I could barely know who he was.

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>> [Male Speaker] The co-pilot was in a lot of pain.

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He asked us to bring him the revolver in order to kill himself because he was suffering so much.

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>> Someone said that he was alive,

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and I realized that he was the key man that could tell us where we were --

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what was our location.

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He was completely trapped.

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It was impossible to get him out.

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>> Before the pilot dies,

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they hear him saying, "We passed Curico."

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"We passed Curico."

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The pilot was in shock.

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He probably realized that he had made a mistake,

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but he's telling -- "But how can this be?"

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>> I remember very vividly that he said,

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"We passed Curico."

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"We passed Curico."

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And there was a map there,

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and we begin looking at the map,

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and Curico was on the Chilean side very clearly.

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>> The survivors are thinking,

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this is the only reliable information we have from somebody who is supposed to know about this.

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So, if we passed Curico,

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that means we are on the western edge of the Andes.

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>> You find yourself in a glaciated valley at 12,000 feet in the middle of the Andes.

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It's still today a very remote place.

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>> It's like stepping into a giant freezer --

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this valley surrounded by peaks on three sides and kind of open to the east.

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The mountains around you are peaks that are 14, 15, 16 thousand feet high.

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To the east you have a volcano that's 18,000 feet --

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very sheer, steep.

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This party immediately had to protect themselves from the elements,

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or all of them may not have survived the first night or two,

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and they were put instantly into a very high altitude environment

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where now they have to start, very quickly adjusting to the elevation.

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>> The first night was horrible

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because the sun set at 4 in the afternoon,

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and we had to wait about 15 hours for the sun to come up again.

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00:17:31,769 --> 00:17:36,333
>> They quickly had to decide how they were going to survive the first night.

245
00:17:36,333 --> 00:17:42,735
Sharing warmth amongst themselves was probably the most important thing that they could have done.

246
00:17:42,735 --> 00:18:01,988


247
00:18:01,988 --> 00:18:05,398
>> You're in this expectation that you're going to be rescued,

248
00:18:05,398 --> 00:18:07,209
and hopes are high.

249
00:18:07,209 --> 00:18:10,999
And you are going to do everything you can to survive those first few days

250
00:18:10,999 --> 00:18:14,031
until the helicopters come over the mountain and pick you up.

251
00:18:14,031 --> 00:18:16,342
And then they don't

252
00:18:16,342 --> 00:18:22,099


253
00:18:22,099 --> 00:18:24,771
And then the friends around you die.

254
00:18:24,771 --> 00:18:38,526


255
00:18:38,526 --> 00:18:42,490
>> After the plane crashed and we didn't have any food,

256
00:18:42,490 --> 00:18:48,769
we shared a few little cups of liquor, some little chocolates, and that was all we had.

257
00:18:48,769 --> 00:19:11,631


258
00:19:11,770 --> 00:19:13,314
>> We had some little chocolates,

259
00:19:13,314 --> 00:19:19,351
and that was all we had.

260
00:19:19,351 --> 00:19:19,681


261
00:19:19,681 --> 00:19:22,581
>> [Male Speaker] Nando? Nando?

262
00:19:22,581 --> 00:19:24,839
>> When a person who had an accident like what Nando had,

263
00:19:24,839 --> 00:19:27,131
the treatment we would do nowadays in the 21st Century is actually what nature did to Nando,

264
00:19:27,131 --> 00:19:28,959
with total serendipity in 1972.

265
00:19:28,959 --> 00:19:30,936
It was recently proven that low temperature that is hypothermia

266
00:19:30,936 --> 00:19:37,925
is one of the only effective neuro protectants that is something to protect an injured brain.

267
00:19:37,925 --> 00:19:43,385
The fact that Nando was considered dead and was put with the seriously ill and dead bodies

268
00:19:43,385 --> 00:19:48,498
close to the entrance and coldest part of the fuselage

269
00:19:48,498 --> 00:19:54,336
probably exerted a significantly protective effect of his injured brain.

270
00:19:54,336 --> 00:20:00,667
Based on a great paradox, the accident itself is what probably kept Nando alive.

271
00:20:00,667 --> 00:20:04,960
>> [Nando] The first things that I started seeing were the eyes and the faces of my friends

272
00:20:04,960 --> 00:20:08,865
who were very close to me looking to me and speaking,

273
00:20:08,865 --> 00:20:10,276
"Nando, we crashed."

274
00:20:10,276 --> 00:20:11,304
"Can you hear me?"

275
00:20:11,304 --> 00:20:12,750
"Can you listen?"

276
00:20:12,750 --> 00:20:14,130
"Can you hear?"

277
00:20:14,130 --> 00:20:16,145
"We crashed."

278
00:20:16,145 --> 00:20:23,759
>> I remember Nando saying the first words and asking about his mother and his sister.

279
00:20:23,759 --> 00:20:26,995
>> [Nando] They said your mother is dead and Susie is wounded.

280
00:20:26,995 --> 00:20:28,858
She's hurt.

281
00:20:28,858 --> 00:20:32,411
My mind discarded, in that moment, my mother.

282
00:20:32,411 --> 00:20:33,314
I mean she's dead.

283
00:20:33,314 --> 00:20:34,715
I can't do anything for her.

284
00:20:34,715 --> 00:20:37,142
So, I focused on my sister,

285
00:20:37,142 --> 00:20:39,708
and I crawled to where she was.

286
00:20:39,708 --> 00:20:42,738
>> He was very devoted to her and was trying to do his best,

287
00:20:42,738 --> 00:20:46,120
but it was very difficult.

288
00:20:46,120 --> 00:20:53,234


289
00:20:53,234 --> 00:20:55,385
>> [Nando] The first time I got of there,

290
00:20:55,385 --> 00:21:03,657
I was shocked at the sheer majesty and sight of the place where we were.

291
00:21:03,657 --> 00:21:06,843
Everything was white, white, white, white.

292
00:21:06,843 --> 00:21:09,507
And it was cold, and it was huge in sight.

293
00:21:09,507 --> 00:21:13,752


294
00:21:13,752 --> 00:21:18,024
At an altitude of 11, 12, 14 thousand feet,

295
00:21:18,024 --> 00:21:20,182
there is absolutely nothing.

296
00:21:20,182 --> 00:21:23,293
There is ice, snow, and black rocks.

297
00:21:23,293 --> 00:21:24,371
That's all.

298
00:21:24,371 --> 00:21:30,340
There's nothing that can provide any sort of food or nutrition --

299
00:21:30,340 --> 00:21:33,599
nothing -- absolutely nothing.

300
00:21:33,599 --> 00:21:38,076
Obviously, we waited for a rescue from the first, second, third, fourth day,

301
00:21:38,076 --> 00:21:40,442
but it didn't come.

302
00:21:40,442 --> 00:21:43,948
>> We arrived in Chile,

303
00:21:43,948 --> 00:21:49,221
and they divided the search area between the Chilean Air Force, the Argentine Air Force, and us

304
00:21:49,221 --> 00:21:54,385
And we performed a series of flights over the Andes from north to south.

305
00:21:54,385 --> 00:21:57,485
That was something we had never done before,

306
00:21:57,485 --> 00:22:01,192
and we saw absolutely nothing.

307
00:22:01,192 --> 00:22:13,937


308
00:22:13,937 --> 00:22:18,415
>> It would be a little crazy to assume that your son had survived.

309
00:22:18,415 --> 00:22:22,927
An important thing for me was the search.

310
00:22:22,927 --> 00:22:26,024
>> It was very sad.

311
00:22:29,039 --> 00:22:30,043
The stage we lived through.

312
00:22:30,043 --> 00:22:32,373
We didn't know anything.

313
00:22:32,373 --> 00:22:41,308
I was one of those that finally believed that none had survived the Andes.

314
00:22:41,308 --> 00:22:44,683
>> My heart told me that they were dead.

315
00:22:44,683 --> 00:22:49,351


316
00:22:49,351 --> 00:22:53,653
>> [Nando] The last hours that I spent with my sister, Susie,

317
00:22:53,653 --> 00:22:56,981
the only thing I could do was to hold her.

318
00:22:56,981 --> 00:22:57,796
We didn't have any medicines.

319
00:22:57,796 --> 00:23:00,231
We didn't have anything.

320
00:23:00,231 --> 00:23:04,197
She was very badly hurt, injured internally.

321
00:23:04,197 --> 00:23:07,728
I stayed with her the whole night,

322
00:23:07,728 --> 00:23:11,462
and I think that she was aware that I was there.

323
00:23:11,462 --> 00:23:13,868
She couldn't speak.

324
00:23:13,868 --> 00:23:17,772
She only looked at me with her beautiful eyes,

325
00:23:17,772 --> 00:23:20,635
and she died in my arms that night.

326
00:23:20,635 --> 00:23:26,755


327
00:23:26,755 --> 00:23:31,337
At least I'm happy that she passed away with me,

328
00:23:31,337 --> 00:23:34,514
you know, not alone.

329
00:23:34,514 --> 00:23:50,732


330
00:23:50,732 --> 00:23:54,666
The real hope died on the 10th day

331
00:23:54,666 --> 00:23:58,068
when we listened on the small transistor radio that we had

332
00:23:58,068 --> 00:24:01,679
that the rescue had been abandoned.

333
00:24:01,679 --> 00:24:07,451
And before the 10th day we had these games of hope,

334
00:24:07,451 --> 00:24:11,491
and after that hope was not existent --

335
00:24:11,491 --> 00:24:15,893
hope only prolonged our suffering.

336
00:24:15,893 --> 00:24:19,004
The hope absolutely went away.

337
00:24:19,004 --> 00:24:23,245


338
00:24:23,245 --> 00:24:27,789
>> I said Nando, "There isn't anything left in the storage compartments,"

339
00:24:27,789 --> 00:24:31,010
where we kept the chocolates and the can of sardines we had.

340
00:24:31,010 --> 00:24:33,915
And Nando looked me in the eyes and said,

341
00:24:33,915 --> 00:24:38,029
"Carliots, I want to eat the pilot."

342
00:24:38,029 --> 00:24:54,274


343
00:24:54,274 --> 00:24:56,800
>> The struggle to survive was so strong,

344
00:24:56,800 --> 00:25:01,190
and the fear and the waiting for the helicopters,

345
00:25:01,190 --> 00:25:03,860
and fighting the fear and the stress,

346
00:25:03,860 --> 00:25:07,312
and helping other guys.

347
00:25:07,312 --> 00:25:09,252
Days went by,

348
00:25:09,252 --> 00:25:13,183
and I never felt pain in my stomach or anything like that.

349
00:25:13,183 --> 00:25:16,619
I was hungry, but I don't remember having any pain.

350
00:25:16,619 --> 00:25:19,145
>> When people are in a starvation mode,

351
00:25:19,145 --> 00:25:24,395
what happens is we start taking all our food supplies from our liver.

352
00:25:24,395 --> 00:25:27,066
The next thing to go is typically muscle.

353
00:25:27,066 --> 00:25:29,801
And then our adipose tissue -- or fatty tissue,

354
00:25:29,801 --> 00:25:33,008
and then we start digesting our internal organs.

355
00:25:33,008 --> 00:25:35,932
That's really what happens as people starve.

356
00:25:35,932 --> 00:25:38,558
They had to have a food source.

357
00:25:38,558 --> 00:25:40,555
They could only survive a few days without water.

358
00:25:40,555 --> 00:25:43,264
They had kind of solved that problem.

359
00:25:43,264 --> 00:25:49,711


360
00:25:49,711 --> 00:25:57,675
But you can only survive in that kind of environment from days to weeks without some kind of food.

361
00:25:57,675 --> 00:25:59,173
>> When you're abandoned,

362
00:25:59,173 --> 00:26:00,591
there is nothing at that altitude.

363
00:26:00,591 --> 00:26:05,581
You are looking to any item that could be available.

364
00:26:05,581 --> 00:26:09,366
And we had read so many times about history,

365
00:26:09,366 --> 00:26:11,318
and explorers who were without food,

366
00:26:11,318 --> 00:26:16,057
and they tried to eat thier shoes and thier suitcases and leather straps,

367
00:26:16,057 --> 00:26:17,758
and we tried.

368
00:26:17,758 --> 00:26:19,711
We tasted.

369
00:26:19,711 --> 00:26:24,345
We tasted pieces of leather from suitcases.

370
00:26:24,345 --> 00:26:26,916
They would do much more harm,

371
00:26:26,916 --> 00:26:29,640
so there was absolutely nothing.

372
00:26:29,640 --> 00:26:32,590
You cannot eat that foam from the cushions.

373
00:26:32,590 --> 00:26:35,971
You cannot eat plastic.

374
00:26:35,971 --> 00:26:39,030
When rescue was abandoned,

375
00:26:39,030 --> 00:26:41,255
you know that you have to eat.

376
00:26:41,255 --> 00:26:43,519
The chocolates are gone.

377
00:26:43,519 --> 00:26:45,730
If you want to survive --

378
00:26:45,730 --> 00:26:48,452
the survival instinct is probably the strongest instinct in any human being.

379
00:26:48,452 --> 00:26:53,890
It brings you to a different state of mind.

380
00:26:53,890 --> 00:26:54,823


381
00:26:54,823 --> 00:26:58,390
>> The decision of eating the dead bodies of our friends,

382
00:26:58,390 --> 00:27:00,718
started to creep into our minds at the same time.

383
00:27:00,718 --> 00:27:03,988
Because we all had the same fear --

384
00:27:03,988 --> 00:27:06,852
the same lack of hope -- the same confirmation

385
00:27:06,852 --> 00:27:08,667
that we were dead.

386
00:27:08,667 --> 00:27:10,785
We were condemned.

387
00:27:10,785 --> 00:27:12,588
No rescue.

388
00:27:12,588 --> 00:27:14,948
We were abandoned to our own luck.

389
00:27:14,948 --> 00:27:17,334
On the same day, three or four or five guys started to speak about the same thing.

390
00:27:17,334 --> 00:27:19,288
I spoke it was Carlito.

391
00:27:19,288 --> 00:27:22,086
I don't remember if I was the first one or not,

392
00:27:22,086 --> 00:27:25,227
but you know five, six hours later everybody was speaking about the same subject.

393
00:27:25,227 --> 00:27:31,805
>> I said, "Adolpho, Nando is crazy. He wants to eat the pilot."

394
00:27:31,805 --> 00:27:31,805
And Adolfo told me, "He's not that crazy."

395
00:27:32,298 --> 00:27:37,919
"My cousins and I have already been thinking about that."

396
00:27:37,919 --> 00:27:41,567
>> It was very difficult to accept this idea.

397
00:27:41,567 --> 00:27:44,671
It was in the mind of many of us.

398
00:27:44,671 --> 00:27:46,436
We want to live,

399
00:27:46,436 --> 00:27:50,449
and the only way was to eat the bodies of our friends.

400
00:27:50,449 --> 00:27:57,494
>> One of the things that was used to persuade some of those reluctant to eat the dead bodies

401
00:27:57,494 --> 00:27:59,441
was the comparison of the Eucharist.

402
00:27:59,441 --> 00:28:03,223
The Catholic Eucharist where Christ's body was turned into bread,

403
00:28:03,223 --> 00:28:06,661
and you eat the bread.

404
00:28:06,661 --> 00:28:12,529
It was sort of an analogy that helped some of the doubters, if you like, to eat human flesh.

405
00:28:12,529 --> 00:28:19,078
>> The survivors only had a screwdriver and an ax that was on the plane.

406
00:28:19,093 --> 00:28:22,044
So, they had to make more tools.

407
00:28:22,044 --> 00:28:29,689
Some of the tools that they made were knives that were made out of plastic of the windows.

408
00:28:29,689 --> 00:28:35,825
In February 2005, we had the luck to find one of these -- one of the knives they made.

409
00:28:35,825 --> 00:28:38,839
The reason why they need a knife was to cut meat.

410
00:28:38,839 --> 00:28:42,305
This was obviously used for that.

411
00:28:42,305 --> 00:28:44,258


412
00:28:44,258 --> 00:28:48,427
>> It was sharpened or cut with the ax.

413
00:28:48,427 --> 00:28:51,245
>> It's terrible to invade someone else,

414
00:28:51,245 --> 00:28:54,747
and to take advantage of someone that is dead.

415
00:28:54,747 --> 00:28:56,902
The only reason that I did it is

416
00:28:56,902 --> 00:29:02,643
because I thought that if I had died I would be very proud to be a part of the project of life.

417
00:29:02,643 --> 00:29:09,607


418
00:29:09,607 --> 00:29:12,810
>> [Nando] It's hard to put yourself in that situation,

419
00:29:12,810 --> 00:29:16,371
but being there you had been one of us.

420
00:29:16,371 --> 00:29:18,700
There is only one option.

421
00:29:18,700 --> 00:29:25,700
The decision comes quite easy.

422
00:29:25,700 --> 00:29:26,542
>> Think about it.

423
00:29:26,542 --> 00:29:30,017
Every individual in that group had to look down

424
00:29:30,017 --> 00:29:32,376
see little pieces of protein --

425
00:29:32,376 --> 00:29:35,936
little pieces of fat, and when they bring it up to their mouth,

426
00:29:35,936 --> 00:29:38,334
what's their mind telling them?

427
00:29:38,334 --> 00:29:42,332
For some it's going to be, "Oh my god. This was my friend."

428
00:29:42,332 --> 00:29:45,115
"This was someone in seat 3B."

429
00:29:45,115 --> 00:29:47,890
And others when they consumed it,

430
00:29:47,890 --> 00:29:51,023
and all of a sudden the body responded in a favorable way,

431
00:29:51,023 --> 00:29:53,426
where they felt some strength --

432
00:29:53,426 --> 00:29:55,852
maybe some flow of energy back in the body.

433
00:29:55,852 --> 00:30:00,026
This was a glimmer of hope to where they can survive and be rescued.

434
00:30:00,026 --> 00:30:10,122


435
00:30:10,122 --> 00:30:13,018
>> From a religious point of view for me,

436
00:30:13,018 --> 00:30:15,211
it wasn't a sin.

437
00:30:15,211 --> 00:30:19,161
I understood that a body that was there before the worms ate it

438
00:30:19,161 --> 00:30:21,253
could be utilized by us.

439
00:30:21,253 --> 00:30:25,154
For me that didn't affect me then,

440
00:30:25,154 --> 00:30:26,547
and it doesn't affect me now.

441
00:30:26,547 --> 00:30:29,017
>> From the medical point of view,

442
00:30:29,017 --> 00:30:31,286
it's fat.

443
00:30:31,286 --> 00:30:33,126
It's lipids.

444
00:30:33,126 --> 00:30:34,925
It's carbohydrates, and a source of energy.

445
00:30:34,925 --> 00:30:38,027
There is no doubt about it.

446
00:30:38,027 --> 00:30:40,713
>> For them, trying different parts of the body --

447
00:30:40,713 --> 00:30:45,192
eating organs that are more rich in vitamins was essential for the nutrition.

448
00:30:45,192 --> 00:30:46,894
It was something that their bodies were craving.

449
00:30:46,894 --> 00:30:48,700
When they would try something different,

450
00:30:48,700 --> 00:30:50,646
it would taste good because the body is telling them,

451
00:30:50,646 --> 00:30:54,444
"Yes, you need more vitamins. You need this"

452
00:30:54,444 --> 00:30:57,637
Any different flavor was something that was highly welcomed.

453
00:30:57,637 --> 00:31:06,877
So that is how they ended up eating everything -- almost every part of the body.

454
00:31:06,877 --> 00:31:10,888
>> People used the term "cannibalism" for their food source.

455
00:31:10,888 --> 00:31:13,408
I actually consider it survival food.

456
00:31:13,408 --> 00:31:15,039
They did what they had to do.

457
00:31:15,039 --> 00:31:21,528
I've read, and I've seen our story described as cannibalism,

458
00:31:21,528 --> 00:31:23,658
which I think is wrong.

459
00:31:23,658 --> 00:31:26,269
Cannibalism is when you kill to eat.

460
00:31:26,269 --> 00:31:31,477
I mean ancient warriors killed the enemy tribes and then they eat the dead,

461
00:31:31,477 --> 00:31:36,376
and it had a lot of tribal and spiritual meanings also.

462
00:31:36,376 --> 00:31:41,016
In our case, I think the terminology we should use is anthropophagy.

463
00:31:41,016 --> 00:31:45,739


464
00:31:45,739 --> 00:31:47,524
And it's just terminology.

465
00:31:47,524 --> 00:31:51,229


466
00:31:51,229 --> 00:31:54,324
We made a pact, and we did what people do now.

467
00:31:54,324 --> 00:31:58,550
People give blood to friends -- to family members.

468
00:31:58,550 --> 00:32:02,975
They make organ transplants.

469
00:32:02,975 --> 00:32:04,313
And we made a pact.

470
00:32:04,313 --> 00:32:08,561
We said okay hand in hand.

471
00:32:08,561 --> 00:32:13,580
If I die please use my body, so at least one of us can get out of here.

472
00:32:13,595 --> 00:32:19,177
As a human being, you would see and do things so horrible you cannot even start to imagine,

473
00:32:19,177 --> 00:32:25,315
but things get worse.

474
00:32:25,315 --> 00:32:25,315
>> What the survivors didn't' realize was that this place was a time bomb.

475
00:32:25,315 --> 00:32:38,668


476
00:32:38,668 --> 00:32:44,943
>> Where the fuselage was was a place that gets regularly hit by avalanches.

477
00:32:44,943 --> 00:32:49,568
It was just a matter of time before an avalanche would come down.

478
00:32:49,568 --> 00:32:56,332
Nobody in the plane hand any experience with glaciers, with avalanches, with snow.

479
00:32:56,332 --> 00:32:58,737
That's one of the tragedies of this situation.

480
00:32:58,737 --> 00:33:07,797


481
00:33:07,797 --> 00:33:13,373
>> Avalanches have been known to move reinforced concrete buildings off their foundations.

482
00:33:13,373 --> 00:33:16,449
They've taken trains off the train tracks.

483
00:33:16,449 --> 00:33:20,641
They have taken steel bridges and blown them apart,

484
00:33:20,641 --> 00:33:26,033
so that there is an enormous amount of impact pressure behind avalanches.

485
00:33:26,033 --> 00:33:27,712


486
00:33:27,712 --> 00:33:30,730
>> [Nando] You're at the worst thing that can happen in your life.

487
00:33:30,730 --> 00:33:33,573
I mean we were stranded in the Andes,

488
00:33:33,573 --> 00:33:36,008
surviving in the worst way a human being can survive.

489
00:33:36,008 --> 00:33:38,779
>> For three consecutive days it snowed,

490
00:33:38,779 --> 00:33:40,963
and snowed, and snowed.

491
00:33:40,963 --> 00:33:43,638
We were totally enclosed in the plane surrounded by snow.

492
00:33:43,638 --> 00:33:47,792
>> Surviving in that way, two and a half weeks after the plane crashed,

493
00:33:47,792 --> 00:33:51,303
at night in complete darkness.

494
00:33:51,303 --> 00:33:54,075
We heard a distant sound.

495
00:33:54,075 --> 00:33:57,613
>> I heard some people describe an avalanche when it started as a large boom --

496
00:33:57,613 --> 00:34:02,852
like a sonic boom from an airplane, as the avalanche failed on its weak layer.

497
00:34:02,852 --> 00:34:05,176
Sometimes they make hissing noises.

498
00:34:05,176 --> 00:34:07,542
Sometimes they are absolutely quiet,

499
00:34:07,542 --> 00:34:12,229
and you don't even know that they are coming down the mountain until they actually strike you.

500
00:34:12,229 --> 00:34:17,008
>> Very quickly we felt something like the sound of a pack of horses charging at us --

501
00:34:17,008 --> 00:34:19,342
coming from above.

502
00:34:19,342 --> 00:34:23,678
>> It was something so lightningly fast.

503
00:34:23,678 --> 00:34:25,745


504
00:34:25,745 --> 00:34:28,791
I heard a sound, and I looked to my right,

505
00:34:28,791 --> 00:34:31,965
and at that moment the avalanche hit the airplane.

506
00:34:31,965 --> 00:34:36,014


507
00:34:36,014 --> 00:34:38,910
>> The avalanche came down off the mountain.

508
00:34:38,910 --> 00:34:42,425
It went right in the open end of the fuselage,

509
00:34:42,425 --> 00:34:47,291
blowing out the wall that they had built to help protect them, and buried all the people inside.

510
00:34:47,291 --> 00:34:51,057
>> Two seconds later, I was completely buried by the avalanche.

511
00:34:51,057 --> 00:34:56,400
>> Quickly tons of snow got inside the fuselage and buried us completely.

512
00:34:56,400 --> 00:34:57,775
>> I was trapped completely by the avalanche,

513
00:34:57,775 --> 00:35:02,763
and it was the most deadly silence you may imagine.

514
00:35:02,763 --> 00:35:05,018
I couldn't move.

515
00:35:05,018 --> 00:35:08,119
>> You are stuck in this contorted position.

516
00:35:08,119 --> 00:35:10,461
You could be bent backwards with your heels against your head.

517
00:35:10,461 --> 00:35:14,824
You could be in a position where the pain is just unendurable,

518
00:35:14,824 --> 00:35:17,986
and yet you can't breathe anymore either.

519
00:35:17,986 --> 00:35:20,924
>> It can be a horrible, horrible way to die.

520
00:35:20,924 --> 00:35:24,054
>> I felt I was dying, and then a smile came to my face.

521
00:35:24,054 --> 00:35:28,109
I realized that everything was over.

522
00:35:28,109 --> 00:35:32,488
>> You can only survive three minutes without oxygen.

523
00:35:32,488 --> 00:35:34,758
If you don't have adequate oxygen to breathe,

524
00:35:34,758 --> 00:35:38,189
you will die in that three to four minute time frame.

525
00:35:38,189 --> 00:35:43,932
>> Probably somewhere around 75% of people that are buried in avalanches die from asphyxiation.

526
00:35:43,932 --> 00:35:46,823
>> Roy hardly managed to get out,

527
00:35:46,823 --> 00:35:49,496
and then I got out.

528
00:35:49,496 --> 00:35:52,927
The first thing that we wanted to do was dig our friends out.

529
00:35:52,927 --> 00:35:57,658
Diego Storm, Nicolich, but when I got to them, they were both dead.

530
00:35:57,658 --> 00:36:00,203
>> It must have been an incredible panic situation.

531
00:36:00,203 --> 00:36:01,792
"Now what do I do?"

532
00:36:01,792 --> 00:36:04,909
"What do I do?"

533
00:36:04,909 --> 00:36:07,831
They are all in this confined space,

534
00:36:07,831 --> 00:36:10,365
but as soon as you move snow,

535
00:36:10,365 --> 00:36:13,585
you're piling it on top of other people,

536
00:36:13,585 --> 00:36:16,797
because everybody is packed in so tight.

537
00:36:16,797 --> 00:36:19,899
>> We continued looking for people, uncovering what we could.

538
00:36:19,899 --> 00:36:22,475
>> I opened up my eyes, and I realized that I was alive and they dug me out.

539
00:36:22,475 --> 00:36:24,945
>> Roy Harley took all the snow from my face.

540
00:36:24,945 --> 00:36:28,087
>> And I remember looking for the only woman that was alive at the time,

541
00:36:28,087 --> 00:36:30,354
which was Liliana Methol.

542
00:36:30,354 --> 00:36:33,653
Looking for her, I found the head of Nando Parrado,

543
00:36:33,653 --> 00:36:36,279
and he managed to survive.

544
00:36:36,279 --> 00:36:39,994
>> This avalanche killed eight of us, you know.

545
00:36:39,994 --> 00:36:43,102
Eight of our guys were killed by that avalanche.

546
00:36:43,102 --> 00:36:52,986


547
00:36:52,986 --> 00:36:54,298
>> It was just another brutal blow --

548
00:36:54,298 --> 00:36:57,160
as if things couldn't get any worse.

549
00:36:57,160 --> 00:37:01,457
The avalanche comes and kills eight of them at that point,

550
00:37:01,457 --> 00:37:03,437
and it's hard to imagine, I think,

551
00:37:03,437 --> 00:37:06,655
you're trapped in this little space.

552
00:37:06,655 --> 00:37:09,096
The avalanche has completely covered the plane.

553
00:37:09,096 --> 00:37:15,529
There is no light, and now they have a little space and a little bit oxygen to survive on,

554
00:37:15,529 --> 00:37:17,699
and they're on top of their dead friends --

555
00:37:17,699 --> 00:37:21,215
the ones that were just alive instance before.

556
00:37:21,215 --> 00:37:24,204
And to have to survive three days in something like that,

557
00:37:24,204 --> 00:37:32,500
I think, is just one of the most horrible circumstances you can even imagine.

558
00:37:32,500 --> 00:37:40,818
>> Our first concern was to be buried like a submarine without power in the bottom of the ocean.

559
00:37:40,818 --> 00:37:42,990
You know, we have water on top.

560
00:37:42,990 --> 00:37:44,291
How do we get out of there.

561
00:37:44,291 --> 00:37:47,531
And, also, we had air.

562
00:37:47,531 --> 00:37:50,763
So, we said, "Okay, don't move too much."

563
00:37:50,763 --> 00:37:52,522
"Breathe slowly."

564
00:37:52,522 --> 00:37:55,647
Because we didn't know if we had air.

565
00:37:55,647 --> 00:37:58,957
A lot of the guys said, "What does it matter?"

566
00:37:58,957 --> 00:38:01,233
"There is air nowhere."

567
00:38:01,233 --> 00:38:02,683
"We are buried."

568
00:38:02,683 --> 00:38:05,020
"We are dead."

569
00:38:05,020 --> 00:38:09,618
"If we get out of this burial of this fuselage, we will be on the same situation that we were before."

570
00:38:09,618 --> 00:38:13,456
-- stranded, lost in the middle of the Andes.

571
00:38:13,456 --> 00:38:18,228
Nobody is looking for us.

572
00:38:18,228 --> 00:38:19,716
We don't have any food.

573
00:38:19,716 --> 00:38:20,885
We don't have water.

574
00:38:20,885 --> 00:38:22,141
We are cold.

575
00:38:22,141 --> 00:38:23,351
We will die anyway.

576
00:38:23,351 --> 00:38:24,784
We are already buried.

577
00:38:24,784 --> 00:38:25,711
Let's stay here.

578
00:38:25,711 --> 00:38:28,972
>> Now they have to eat from their very own friends that were right there.

579
00:38:28,972 --> 00:38:29,947
Even worse.

580
00:38:29,947 --> 00:38:30,675
This story of survival has so many extreme moments.

581
00:38:30,675 --> 00:38:30,771


582
00:38:30,771 --> 00:38:32,945
>> I think that the human spirit is stronger than reality sometimes,

583
00:38:32,945 --> 00:38:33,826
and we asked ourselves "What are we doing?"

584
00:38:33,826 --> 00:38:35,140
At least we are breathing.

585
00:38:35,140 --> 00:38:36,686
And if we are breathing, we are alive.

586
00:38:36,686 --> 00:38:46,939
Let's fight until we stop breathing.

587
00:38:46,939 --> 00:38:48,699


588
00:38:48,699 --> 00:38:54,299
I found one of the posts that you tie straps to hold the luggage,

589
00:38:54,299 --> 00:38:57,424
and there was one of these poles in the floor.

590
00:38:57,424 --> 00:39:06,450
And I used it to make a hole in the top of the fuselage so that air would come in.

591
00:39:06,450 --> 00:39:13,339
I always think that if the avalanche hadn't happened, we wouldn't have survived.

592
00:39:13,339 --> 00:39:15,553
And people say, "Why?"

593
00:39:15,553 --> 00:39:21,957
And I look back and I say, "Well, first the avalanche covered the airplane,

594
00:39:21,957 --> 00:39:24,419
and all the blizzards and all the storms went over.

595
00:39:24,419 --> 00:39:28,668
So, we were not hit directly by the storms.

596
00:39:28,668 --> 00:39:35,169
And, secondly, we could wait there one and a half more months because we had eight more bodies.

597
00:39:35,169 --> 00:39:38,772
And it's very hard to think about that,

598
00:39:38,772 --> 00:39:40,641
but it's a reality.

599
00:39:40,641 --> 00:39:47,477


600
00:39:47,477 --> 00:39:49,116
I was terrified.

601
00:39:49,116 --> 00:39:50,417
I didn't know what to do.

602
00:39:50,417 --> 00:39:52,366
I just followed my heart -- my intuition.

603
00:39:52,366 --> 00:39:54,065
I wanted to go back to my father,

604
00:39:54,065 --> 00:40:00,097
and I didn't take into account all the risks that those things involved.

605
00:40:00,097 --> 00:40:03,266
Had we known what we were going to face,

606
00:40:03,266 --> 00:40:05,936
we would never have started.

607
00:40:05,936 --> 00:40:18,648


608
00:40:18,648 --> 00:40:20,183
>> As the snow melted around it,

609
00:40:20,183 --> 00:40:22,783
it left the fuselage in a bit of -- sort of a pedestal.

610
00:40:22,783 --> 00:40:24,649
So, it was very unstable.

611
00:40:24,649 --> 00:40:27,467
In fact they were afraid that it was going to roll off into a crevice.

612
00:40:27,467 --> 00:40:29,634
>> Over the weeks, you know,

613
00:40:29,634 --> 00:40:35,483
they came into a routine of drying out the airplane, and drying out their sleeping pads,

614
00:40:35,483 --> 00:40:38,710
and gathering water and gathering food.

615
00:40:38,710 --> 00:40:41,615
And it comes down, again, to a routine of basics.

616
00:40:41,615 --> 00:40:44,812
They were in a survival situation.

617
00:40:44,812 --> 00:40:49,976
>> The most secure place on that remote landscape was the fuselage.

618
00:40:49,976 --> 00:40:56,787
It was like an igloo, and comfort was inside that place.

619
00:40:56,787 --> 00:41:00,591
You only got out of there because you had to trek.

620
00:41:00,591 --> 00:41:02,099
You had to test things.

621
00:41:02,099 --> 00:41:03,900
You had to explore.

622
00:41:03,900 --> 00:41:07,228
>> The Andes are an amazing mountain range.

623
00:41:07,228 --> 00:41:10,377
They stretch the whole length of South America.

624
00:41:10,377 --> 00:41:11,732
They're rugged.

625
00:41:11,732 --> 00:41:13,270
They're tall.

626
00:41:13,270 --> 00:41:16,846
The air is thin in the Andes just like in any other high mountains of the world.

627
00:41:16,846 --> 00:41:22,690
So, it is a very challenging and difficult range of mountains to try to climb.

628
00:41:22,690 --> 00:41:25,687
>> The first guys who left the airplane for the first time,

629
00:41:25,687 --> 00:41:29,011
they just went away like 250 yards from the fuselage,

630
00:41:29,011 --> 00:41:36,133
and they found it so difficult to walk on deep snow, crevices that they had to return.

631
00:41:36,133 --> 00:41:39,309
>> It was very hard to go out from the plane.

632
00:41:39,309 --> 00:41:44,268
It was very hard because the plane in some sense would protect you.

633
00:41:44,268 --> 00:41:46,937
I went out on three expeditions.

634
00:41:46,937 --> 00:41:48,516
I went out, I came back --

635
00:41:48,516 --> 00:41:51,081
always trying to look for the tail of the plane.

636
00:41:51,081 --> 00:41:56,063
And in the last expedition, I remember that I surrendered.

637
00:41:56,063 --> 00:42:01,582
>> I returned with my eyes mostly blinded -- burned by the snow --

638
00:42:01,582 --> 00:42:08,483
because I didn't have any shades and it loosened up my teeth and my feet were practically gangrene.

639
00:42:08,483 --> 00:42:14,058
>> It was very tough because you felt like an insect against huge forces of nature.

640
00:42:14,058 --> 00:42:18,770
>> It is the story of being easier to die than it is to live.

641
00:42:18,770 --> 00:42:21,616
The most attractive option was to die.

642
00:42:21,616 --> 00:42:24,978
>> Any survival story that you read about,

643
00:42:24,978 --> 00:42:28,315
whether it's on a desert island or in the middle of the ocean or the mountains,

644
00:42:28,315 --> 00:42:31,725
people simply out of desperation improvise,

645
00:42:31,725 --> 00:42:35,474
and they build and make the things that they need to survive.

646
00:42:35,474 --> 00:42:41,857


647
00:42:41,857 --> 00:42:43,904
>> Once we had created a couple of snow shoes,

648
00:42:43,904 --> 00:42:46,934
I was elected as the expedition leader

649
00:42:46,934 --> 00:42:51,527
because of probably my will to get out of there and look for my father and go back to him.

650
00:42:51,527 --> 00:42:55,267
And I said, "Okay, we have to test the equipment."

651
00:42:55,267 --> 00:43:01,210
"We have to go further down the valley to see how we react ourselves as a team."

652
00:43:01,210 --> 00:43:05,090
>> Nando became the kind of the "head boy."

653
00:43:05,090 --> 00:43:08,986
He was the sort of -- the younger boys looked up to him.

654
00:43:08,986 --> 00:43:15,555


655
00:43:15,555 --> 00:43:18,762
>> Roberto, Antonio, and myself we left one morning

656
00:43:18,762 --> 00:43:25,943
to try to get away as far as we could from the airplane and come back in a day.

657
00:43:25,943 --> 00:43:27,199
It was a test.

658
00:43:27,199 --> 00:43:30,886
It was research and development, you could call it.

659
00:43:30,886 --> 00:43:33,740
We started to walk down the valley, down the valley, down the valley,

660
00:43:33,740 --> 00:43:39,862
and suddenly as soon as we went over a small hill, we saw the tail.

661
00:43:39,862 --> 00:43:45,795
The tail had flown - had been torn from the fuselage and had cartwheeled down the mountain,

662
00:43:45,795 --> 00:43:48,391
and it was in the valley.

663
00:43:48,391 --> 00:43:50,443
There were a few suitcases there.

664
00:43:50,443 --> 00:43:53,303
And instantly we searched for food.

665
00:43:53,303 --> 00:44:00,134
We only found a small box of chocolates and the camera.

666
00:44:00,134 --> 00:44:04,738
We also found something that was quite interesting which were the batteries --

667
00:44:04,738 --> 00:44:09,435
24 batteries that were installed there at the tail.

668
00:44:09,435 --> 00:44:11,424
And we said, "Okay, we have batteries."

669
00:44:11,424 --> 00:44:13,680
"We have radios in the cockpit."

670
00:44:13,680 --> 00:44:17,384
"Maybe we can make these radios work."

671
00:44:17,384 --> 00:44:20,067
So, we decided to spend the night there,

672
00:44:20,067 --> 00:44:25,901
and the next day we went all the way up to the fuselage again.

673
00:44:25,901 --> 00:44:30,344
And we said, "Okay we have to take the radios from the cockpit."

674
00:44:30,344 --> 00:44:35,011
Roy helped us as he had assembled a stereo unit in his home.

675
00:44:35,011 --> 00:44:38,269
We declared him the radio expert.

676
00:44:38,269 --> 00:44:42,103
You know that connecting radio equipment to batteries is not easy.

677
00:44:42,103 --> 00:44:44,255
We didn't have the knowledge.

678
00:44:44,255 --> 00:44:49,430
And from the back part of the radios bundles of cables came out that we had to cut.

679
00:44:49,430 --> 00:44:52,263
How do we connect those cables to the batteries?

680
00:44:52,263 --> 00:44:54,194
Impossible.

681
00:44:54,194 --> 00:44:56,436
It never worked.

682
00:44:56,436 --> 00:45:01,778
Another piece of hope was completely destroyed then.

683
00:45:01,778 --> 00:45:06,136
And we were very depressed because we had put a lot of hope on the radios working.

684
00:45:06,136 --> 00:45:09,880


685
00:45:09,880 --> 00:45:12,352
When we found the camera on the tail,

686
00:45:12,352 --> 00:45:15,079
I remember saying, "Okay it has a roll."

687
00:45:15,079 --> 00:45:22,438
"Let's take pictures because maybe this camera will be found maybe 50, 60, 100 years from now,

688
00:45:22,438 --> 00:45:26,489
and they will reveal the roll, and they will see that people lived here.

689
00:45:26,489 --> 00:45:30,325
Because on our minds we were going to die.

690
00:45:30,325 --> 00:45:32,163
So, we took photographs.

691
00:45:32,163 --> 00:45:40,549


692
00:45:40,549 --> 00:45:45,938
>> One night Arturo threw something at me,

693
00:45:45,938 --> 00:45:47,989
and he said he was in a lot of pain.

694
00:45:47,989 --> 00:45:51,552
So, I lowered him, and he told me he was dying.

695
00:45:51,552 --> 00:45:55,582
So, for about an hour, I started doing CPR.

696
00:45:55,582 --> 00:45:59,297
When I stopped, he was acting as if he was going to die,

697
00:45:59,297 --> 00:46:02,995
and so I continued until finally I told him I couldn't do it anymore.

698
00:46:02,995 --> 00:46:05,505
And he got really gone,

699
00:46:05,505 --> 00:46:08,064
and he let go of my hands like this,

700
00:46:08,064 --> 00:46:11,847
and he died with a look of happiness on his face.

701
00:46:11,847 --> 00:46:22,549


702
00:46:22,549 --> 00:46:24,427
>> In the case of Numa Turcatti,

703
00:46:24,427 --> 00:46:26,994
his physical condition told him that he was going to die.

704
00:46:26,994 --> 00:46:28,549
There was no way out.

705
00:46:28,549 --> 00:46:30,937
And he did not survive.

706
00:46:30,937 --> 00:46:32,519
>> We loved him a lot,

707
00:46:32,519 --> 00:46:34,075
and he never complained.

708
00:46:34,075 --> 00:46:36,027
He died weighing 55 pounds.

709
00:46:36,027 --> 00:46:40,860


710
00:46:40,860 --> 00:46:46,277
>> Waiting is horrible at that point when you are condemned to die.

711
00:46:46,277 --> 00:47:04,388


712
00:47:04,388 --> 00:47:06,232
I kept speaking with Roberto.

713
00:47:06,232 --> 00:47:08,265
"Roberto, we have to get out of here as soon as we can."

714
00:47:08,265 --> 00:47:12,459
We couldn't try to escape to the south because we didn't know where we were going.

715
00:47:12,459 --> 00:47:14,910
To the north -- the northern part of South America.

716
00:47:14,910 --> 00:47:17,963
For us to the east laid the whole Andes,

717
00:47:17,963 --> 00:47:20,404
but to the west was Chile.

718
00:47:20,404 --> 00:47:22,679
We had to aim to that country.

719
00:47:22,679 --> 00:47:30,269


720
00:47:30,269 --> 00:47:32,213
>> The pilot before he died, had said,

721
00:47:32,213 --> 00:47:34,588
"We've crossed the Andes and Chile is to the west."

722
00:47:34,588 --> 00:47:41,315
"To the west is Chile became a kind of slogan that -- a kind of dogma that none of them could doubt.

723
00:47:41,315 --> 00:47:45,938


724
00:47:45,938 --> 00:47:47,860
>> We didn't know if we were in Argentina in Chile.

725
00:47:47,860 --> 00:47:52,628
We only knew that to the west is Chile because of the sun.

726
00:47:52,628 --> 00:47:55,482
We would climb one mountain and from the top,

727
00:47:55,482 --> 00:48:04,647
we would see green valleys, lights of a city in the horizon.

728
00:48:04,647 --> 00:48:07,320
>> To the west, we would be saved.

729
00:48:07,320 --> 00:48:10,930
>> Their information indicated the wise decision was west.

730
00:48:10,930 --> 00:48:14,736
They thought over that ridge has got to be the green valleys of Chile.

731
00:48:14,736 --> 00:48:18,277
To the east, not only did they think that whole Andes was there,

732
00:48:18,277 --> 00:48:21,303
but there's nothing really encouraging for them --

733
00:48:21,303 --> 00:48:25,647
other than the fact that it's downhill.

734
00:48:25,647 --> 00:48:30,818
The survivors didn't realize if they would have gone east into that valley,

735
00:48:30,818 --> 00:48:34,112
there is a hotel 18 miles away from them.

736
00:48:34,112 --> 00:48:49,046


737
00:48:49,046 --> 00:48:51,477
>> The hotel is 18 miles away.

738
00:48:51,477 --> 00:48:57,197
It is a hell of a hike out to get to that point.

739
00:48:57,197 --> 00:49:02,662
It's on the other side of the river.

740
00:49:02,662 --> 00:49:04,397
It is quite a big river.

741
00:49:04,397 --> 00:49:05,141
You can't really cross it.

742
00:49:05,141 --> 00:49:09,251
So, most likely, they wouldn't have been able to get to the other side where the hotel was.

743
00:49:09,251 --> 00:49:12,987
So, it's easy to second guess once you know everything else,

744
00:49:12,987 --> 00:49:14,620
but they didn't.

745
00:49:14,620 --> 00:49:20,565


746
00:49:20,565 --> 00:49:23,474
>> Nando was very desperate to get out of there

747
00:49:23,474 --> 00:49:28,701
because he wanted to go back to his father and tell him that not everything was lost.

748
00:49:28,701 --> 00:49:31,375
>> Nando was raring to go.

749
00:49:31,375 --> 00:49:36,002
He had this extraordinary determination to leave and get back to his father.

750
00:49:36,002 --> 00:49:39,883
>> I think that he realized that either he got himself out of there,

751
00:49:39,883 --> 00:49:42,756
or most likely they were all going to die.

752
00:49:42,756 --> 00:49:44,720
>> I think the others procrastinated.

753
00:49:44,720 --> 00:49:46,385
They hesitated.

754
00:49:46,385 --> 00:49:48,017
They held him back.

755
00:49:48,017 --> 00:49:49,226
They thought the moment wasn't right.

756
00:49:49,226 --> 00:49:51,294
They kept putting it off.

757
00:49:51,294 --> 00:49:52,935
It is difficult to know why.

758
00:49:52,935 --> 00:49:55,101
I think partly because they were frightened he might fail.

759
00:49:55,101 --> 00:50:00,504
>> He needed support, so he asked me to go with him.

760
00:50:00,504 --> 00:50:05,393
And I saw that in the plane there were lots of people pushing Nando,

761
00:50:05,393 --> 00:50:07,127
but they wouldn't go with him.

762
00:50:07,127 --> 00:50:13,761
So, I thought that this was a very coward attitude of supporting someone,

763
00:50:13,761 --> 00:50:17,161
but not completely.

764
00:50:17,161 --> 00:50:22,455
At that moment I realized that I was the guy that could help Nando.

765
00:50:22,455 --> 00:50:24,426
Nando said, "Because you see very well."

766
00:50:24,426 --> 00:50:25,964
"You can handle the maps, and you're a handy man."

767
00:50:25,964 --> 00:50:28,725
"And I want you to go."

768
00:50:28,725 --> 00:50:30,391
Nando was fit.

769
00:50:30,391 --> 00:50:33,199
I was fit.

770
00:50:33,199 --> 00:50:37,771
>> The last expedition was made up of Parrado, Canessa, and Vizintin,

771
00:50:37,771 --> 00:50:39,573
and they had the sleeping bag.

772
00:50:39,573 --> 00:50:42,179
>> I had the idea that with the insulation,

773
00:50:42,179 --> 00:50:43,877
you could make a sleeping bag,

774
00:50:43,877 --> 00:50:45,380
but I not only had the idea.

775
00:50:45,380 --> 00:50:49,920
I made it myself, and it was, without a doubt,

776
00:50:49,920 --> 00:50:51,650
the proudest moment of my life.

777
00:50:51,650 --> 00:50:57,156
The contribution that I made for that final expedition -- that sleeping bag that I made.

778
00:50:57,156 --> 00:51:02,982
>> Carlitos with a needle and copper wire sewed those pieces together,

779
00:51:02,982 --> 00:51:10,436
and we made like a sleeping bag that fundamental to cope with the cold and escape.

780
00:51:10,436 --> 00:51:13,908
>> When I go on a climb, I have a checklist of equipment --

781
00:51:13,908 --> 00:51:18,144
cold weather gear -- solid, heavy boots, crampons,

782
00:51:18,144 --> 00:51:22,414
which attach to the boots, which give me traction in the snow --

783
00:51:22,414 --> 00:51:30,153
ice axes, gloves, hats, insulated clothing, tents, sleeping bags, ropes, anchors.

784
00:51:30,153 --> 00:51:32,889
I mean there's a pile of equipment

785
00:51:32,889 --> 00:51:36,997
that we really don't ever leave home without when we go into the mountains.

786
00:51:36,997 --> 00:51:38,799
And when these guys crashed --

787
00:51:38,799 --> 00:51:39,814
You know, they were rugby players.

788
00:51:39,814 --> 00:51:41,915
They were dressed for summer.

789
00:51:41,915 --> 00:51:44,804
To land in the middle of this arctic wilderness,

790
00:51:44,804 --> 00:51:47,378
you might say, with literally nothing,

791
00:51:47,378 --> 00:51:49,726
it was a pretty amazing feat.

792
00:51:49,726 --> 00:51:50,947
We've got to improvise.

793
00:51:50,947 --> 00:51:55,473
We've got to build and create our own equipment just so that we can get out of here.

794
00:51:55,473 --> 00:51:59,953
>> We had already decided that three of us were going to leave the airplane

795
00:51:59,953 --> 00:52:03,256
as soon as we had a window in the weather.

796
00:52:03,256 --> 00:52:06,829
Finally, we left on December 12th.

797
00:52:06,829 --> 00:52:07,577


798
00:52:07,577 --> 00:52:10,492
The three of us.

799
00:52:10,492 --> 00:52:12,865
>> We left to walk off and Nando returns and he tells me,

800
00:52:12,865 --> 00:52:18,129
"Carlitos, before leaving I want to give a kiss to your rosary."

801
00:52:18,129 --> 00:52:21,044
In exchange for that he gives me a little shoe and he tells me,

802
00:52:21,044 --> 00:52:24,560
"Carlitos, I promise you that I'm going to come back for this other shoe."

803
00:52:24,560 --> 00:52:29,056
That he was going to come back to reunite the pair.

804
00:52:29,056 --> 00:52:32,220
But then he adds, "But this is the most important,

805
00:52:32,220 --> 00:52:39,702
but if this doesn't happen and you need to use my mother and my sister, then do it."

806
00:52:39,702 --> 00:52:43,829
And that was such a great act because he didn't have to give us that authorization,

807
00:52:43,829 --> 00:52:45,698
but he did.

808
00:52:45,698 --> 00:52:50,283


809
00:52:50,283 --> 00:52:55,535
>> To the west is Chile, and this was the idea which we left the fuselage.

810
00:52:55,535 --> 00:52:58,715
>> The only certain thing was to the west was Chile.

811
00:52:58,715 --> 00:53:03,386


812
00:53:03,386 --> 00:53:07,289
>> On the first day we were very optimistic and full of energy.

813
00:53:07,289 --> 00:53:11,296
And at the beginning of the day everything is very easy because the snow is very hard.

814
00:53:11,296 --> 00:53:13,564
But as the day passes by the snow begins to melt.

815
00:53:13,564 --> 00:53:16,299
>> I had never climbed any mountains before,

816
00:53:16,299 --> 00:53:19,732
so I didn't know what I was doing.

817
00:53:19,732 --> 00:53:22,232
It was so strange.

818
00:53:22,232 --> 00:53:26,037
At that altitude, you breathe and you get less oxygen.

819
00:53:26,037 --> 00:53:32,611
I remember seeing those films with climbers walking very slowly towards the summit of the mountains.

820
00:53:32,611 --> 00:53:34,883
And I said, "Why don't they walk faster?"

821
00:53:34,883 --> 00:53:38,375
And then I was in the same situation, and I just couldn't move.

822
00:53:38,375 --> 00:53:46,195
You just take five breaths and move one leg and then the other leg and you climb and climb.

823
00:53:46,195 --> 00:53:48,228
>> When they were confronted with this headwall,

824
00:53:48,228 --> 00:53:53,561
they had 2,000 feet of climbing to do at a 45 degree angle,

825
00:53:53,561 --> 00:53:56,436
which is quite steep.

826
00:53:56,436 --> 00:54:01,307
And the snow was an impediment to their climbing higher.

827
00:54:01,307 --> 00:54:02,972
And you can imagine without any skill --

828
00:54:02,972 --> 00:54:07,750
without any training, you are like a child when you are confronted with a snow slope.

829
00:54:07,750 --> 00:54:09,987
You try to go straight up.

830
00:54:09,987 --> 00:54:12,016
You might be using your hands and your feet.

831
00:54:12,016 --> 00:54:12,791
You're slipping.

832
00:54:12,791 --> 00:54:13,792
You're sliding.

833
00:54:13,792 --> 00:54:17,994
For every step that you go up, you slide back a half a step.

834
00:54:17,994 --> 00:54:20,425
>> It's hard to explain the fear of the unknown.

835
00:54:20,425 --> 00:54:23,175
The having no clue what you are getting yourself into.

836
00:54:23,175 --> 00:54:25,309
It could be terrifying.

837
00:54:25,309 --> 00:54:28,237
Even in mountaineering, when we do know what we're up against --

838
00:54:28,237 --> 00:54:29,803
What the route is.

839
00:54:29,803 --> 00:54:31,574
What the summit is.

840
00:54:31,574 --> 00:54:34,404
It has been documented and everything.

841
00:54:34,404 --> 00:54:36,894
It's still intimidating.

842
00:54:36,894 --> 00:54:38,715
>> I looks like courage.

843
00:54:38,715 --> 00:54:40,817
I can tell you it was not courage.

844
00:54:40,817 --> 00:54:41,904
It was fear.

845
00:54:41,904 --> 00:54:46,279
>> And we tried then to climb through the rocky parts instead of the snow,

846
00:54:46,279 --> 00:54:49,483
and this came unloosed and there were huge rocks coming down.

847
00:54:49,483 --> 00:54:51,561
I was telling Nando, "We are going to kill ourselves."

848
00:54:51,561 --> 00:54:54,225
I was telling Nando, "Come down. This is not the way."

849
00:54:54,225 --> 00:55:00,672
>> I was so wasted when we reached one of the false summits.

850
00:55:00,672 --> 00:55:10,150


851
00:55:10,150 --> 00:55:12,215
I said there is no more strength in me.

852
00:55:12,215 --> 00:55:14,072
Roberto said, "Come on."

853
00:55:14,072 --> 00:55:15,755
"Are you breathing?"

854
00:55:15,755 --> 00:55:16,564
"You're still breathing."

855
00:55:16,564 --> 00:55:17,339
"Come on."

856
00:55:17,339 --> 00:55:18,356
"You can do It."

857
00:55:18,356 --> 00:55:22,820
I said, "Okay, I'll keep on going until I stop breathing."

858
00:55:22,820 --> 00:55:24,390
That was my thought.

859
00:55:24,390 --> 00:55:25,391
Nothing more profound.

860
00:55:25,391 --> 00:55:27,996
Nothing more critical.

861
00:55:27,996 --> 00:55:28,531
I'm alive.

862
00:55:28,531 --> 00:55:29,425
I'm breathing.

863
00:55:29,425 --> 00:55:31,253
I'll keep on going.

864
00:55:31,253 --> 00:55:33,890
>> And we put the sleeping bag and the wind come down,

865
00:55:33,890 --> 00:55:35,785
and the valley was incredible.

866
00:55:35,785 --> 00:55:37,464
It was just gorgeous,

867
00:55:37,464 --> 00:55:39,563
and the moon came down.

868
00:55:39,563 --> 00:55:42,911
And we had some buns that we had find on the tail of the plane.

869
00:55:42,911 --> 00:55:46,863
And taking this run, and I couldn't believe that I was enjoying the scenery,

870
00:55:46,863 --> 00:55:49,826
after struggling and crying and weaping.

871
00:55:49,826 --> 00:55:57,277


872
00:55:57,277 --> 00:56:01,323
>> What we were facing after the first day climbing that first mountain,

873
00:56:01,323 --> 00:56:04,080
was not what I expected to find.

874
00:56:04,080 --> 00:56:09,808
The first day I thought I was going to be in the summit and looking at the green valleys of Chile,

875
00:56:09,808 --> 00:56:13,480
but we were half way climb the mountain.

876
00:56:13,480 --> 00:56:15,740
>> It was very disheartening for the first three days,

877
00:56:15,740 --> 00:56:20,057
because it took them three days to climb up.

878
00:56:20,057 --> 00:56:24,009
What they thought would only take one day took three.

879
00:56:24,009 --> 00:56:27,552
And for three days we saw them as little points up there on the mountain.

880
00:56:27,552 --> 00:56:36,529


881
00:56:36,529 --> 00:56:40,755
>> Roberto was looking in the distance and seeing a line thinking "that could be a road."

882
00:56:40,755 --> 00:56:43,067
And it was impossible for them to tell if it was or not.

883
00:56:43,067 --> 00:56:47,914
>> The road is very interesting because Nando says that the road doesn't exist.

884
00:56:47,914 --> 00:56:54,173
But the road is there, and I bet everything that I saw that road.

885
00:56:54,173 --> 00:56:58,455
>> We actually know now that what he was looking at was the road.

886
00:56:58,455 --> 00:56:59,403
I was there.

887
00:56:59,403 --> 00:57:01,287
I took a photograph.

888
00:57:01,287 --> 00:57:08,089
And I realized that we could actually see the road that we use now from the east to access this valley.

889
00:57:08,089 --> 00:57:12,899
>> But this is a very interesting because although this was a right answer,

890
00:57:12,899 --> 00:57:21,524
at that moment it was a chance in 1,000 that was a road.

891
00:57:21,524 --> 00:57:23,108
>> They were in a very tough situation.

892
00:57:23,108 --> 00:57:27,486
They had already made a huge effort to get that high on the mountain,

893
00:57:27,486 --> 00:57:32,108
and Nando still had the hope that looking over the top of the mountain,

894
00:57:32,108 --> 00:57:34,857
he was going to see green valleys and everything.

895
00:57:34,857 --> 00:57:39,924


896
00:57:39,924 --> 00:57:43,164
>> When I was run down, Nando would say, "Let's keep going."

897
00:57:43,164 --> 00:57:49,760
>> I would climb the mountain, and I would see salvation on the other side.

898
00:57:49,760 --> 00:57:56,559
And when we climbed that first mountain what we saw to the other side really froze me.

899
00:57:56,559 --> 00:58:06,515


900
00:58:06,515 --> 00:58:08,217
I couldn't breathe.

901
00:58:08,217 --> 00:58:09,931
I couldn't speak.

902
00:58:09,931 --> 00:58:13,059
I couldn't even think because what we saw was horrible.

903
00:58:13,059 --> 00:58:18,946
Instead of green valleys, we saw mountains and snow-covered peaks 360 degrees around us --

904
00:58:18,946 --> 00:58:22,309
to the horizon -- all around us.

905
00:58:22,309 --> 00:58:27,726


906
00:58:27,726 --> 00:58:31,937
And I knew that I was really dead.

907
00:58:31,937 --> 00:58:35,823
I decided the way I was going to die.

908
00:58:35,823 --> 00:58:41,249
There was absolutely no way we could survive what we were looking at.

909
00:58:41,249 --> 00:58:42,774
I told Roberto,

910
00:58:42,774 --> 00:58:45,239
"Look, Roberto, there is no way we can go back."

911
00:58:45,239 --> 00:58:46,971
"The only way is forward."

912
00:58:46,971 --> 00:58:49,264
"We'll die, but we'll die trying."

913
00:58:49,264 --> 00:58:53,139
And he looked at me, and I said, "Okay, we have done so many things together."

914
00:58:53,139 --> 00:58:55,808
"Let's do one more."

915
00:58:55,808 --> 00:58:56,973
"Let's die together."

916
00:58:56,973 --> 00:59:08,490


917
00:59:08,490 --> 00:59:12,850
>> When the three of them Vizintin, Nano, and Roberto got to the top of the mountain

918
00:59:12,850 --> 00:59:17,729
and saw there weren't the green valleys of Chile that they always supposed would be on the other

919
00:59:17,729 --> 00:59:19,991
side of the mountain, it was a terrible moment.

920
00:59:19,991 --> 00:59:22,327
And psychologically it was a terrible blow.

921
00:59:22,327 --> 00:59:27,060
And, again, it sort of shows Nando's extraordinary psychological resilience.

922
00:59:27,060 --> 00:59:31,809
Instead of being daunted and depressed and giving up in despair,

923
00:59:31,809 --> 00:59:34,135
he just said right, "We are just going to go on."

924
00:59:34,135 --> 00:59:36,180
"We are going to keep going west."

925
00:59:36,180 --> 00:59:42,284
>> It has been said that hard and tough and challenging situations create character.

926
00:59:42,284 --> 00:59:45,026
I think they actually reveal character.

927
00:59:45,026 --> 00:59:48,683
When you're put into a situation -- a desperate situation --

928
00:59:48,683 --> 00:59:54,161
all the tings that you are and learned come out.

929
00:59:54,161 --> 00:59:57,224
>> Roberto and myself, we got along very, very together.

930
00:59:57,224 --> 00:59:59,539
We were a fantastic team.

931
00:59:59,539 --> 01:00:03,329
And I told Roberto, "Look, the three of us move very slowly."

932
01:00:03,329 --> 01:00:05,113
And we said, "Antonio, please go back."

933
01:00:05,113 --> 01:00:07,376
"Give us whatever you have of food."

934
01:00:07,376 --> 01:00:09,351
"The two of us will go froward."

935
01:00:09,351 --> 01:00:12,746
"Tell the guys that we'll climb and trek to the west."

936
01:00:12,746 --> 01:00:22,189


937
01:00:22,189 --> 01:00:24,358
>> Tintin -- he was delighted.

938
01:00:24,358 --> 01:00:27,491
He beetled back down the mountain as quickly as he possibly could,

939
01:00:27,491 --> 01:00:29,567
because at least they felt safe in that plane.

940
01:00:29,567 --> 01:00:32,023
You know, they had survived and would go on surviving.

941
01:00:32,023 --> 01:00:35,445
>> After three days, we saw that one of them came down,

942
01:00:35,445 --> 01:00:38,580
and we went to meet him.

943
01:00:38,580 --> 01:00:40,541
And it was Vizintin.

944
01:00:40,541 --> 01:00:42,494
And when we got there,

945
01:00:42,494 --> 01:00:47,196
he told us instead of finding the green valleys of Chile they saw a pathetic and disheartening panorama.

946
01:00:47,196 --> 01:00:54,315
But Nando and Roberto made the decision to take Vizintin's food and his extra clothes.

947
01:00:54,315 --> 01:00:59,156
And they sent him to the fuselage with the message that the two of them would forage ahead.

948
01:00:59,156 --> 01:01:03,867
And they wouldn't stop until they were dead.

949
01:01:03,867 --> 01:01:07,807
>> He saw two peaks that had now snow on them.

950
01:01:07,807 --> 01:01:11,446


951
01:01:11,446 --> 01:01:12,472
And behind those peaks you can see no more peaks,

952
01:01:12,472 --> 01:01:16,743
and you see the moisture of the Pacific Ocean.

953
01:01:16,743 --> 01:01:19,578
When you stand there and you look at how far those peaks are,

954
01:01:19,578 --> 01:01:26,854
it brings it home what a desperate situation they were in.

955
01:01:26,854 --> 01:01:29,322
>> My need to get out was completely unique to me

956
01:01:29,322 --> 01:01:33,161
because there would be a time when we didn't have more bodies

957
01:01:33,161 --> 01:01:35,463
except the bodies of my mother and my sister.

958
01:01:35,463 --> 01:01:40,739
And I wouldn't even like to think to get to that moment when we would have to use their corpses to survive.

959
01:01:40,739 --> 01:01:44,913
I had to get out of there,

960
01:01:44,913 --> 01:01:48,007
and we started down the mountains.

961
01:01:48,007 --> 01:01:51,838
That was two guys deciding to go forward.

962
01:01:51,838 --> 01:01:53,396
>> And I said, "Let's go for it."

963
01:01:53,396 --> 01:01:56,240
"Let's forget about it."

964
01:01:56,240 --> 01:02:02,546
And I knew this was a no return way, but every step is a step.

965
01:02:02,546 --> 01:02:05,593
And if we had gone back to the plane,

966
01:02:05,593 --> 01:02:08,457
there were no chances.

967
01:02:08,457 --> 01:02:13,805
>> I wanted to see what they were up against.

968
01:02:13,805 --> 01:02:15,481
What they had gone through.

969
01:02:15,481 --> 01:02:17,443
Just how challenging it was -- especially for a mountaineer.

970
01:02:17,443 --> 01:02:19,702
I was fascinated by it.

971
01:02:19,702 --> 01:02:22,706
So, in December 2005, we retraced the escape route.

972
01:02:22,706 --> 01:02:28,142
We choose the same days that the survivors had gone.

973
01:02:28,142 --> 01:02:30,887
We wanted to experience the same snow conditions.

974
01:02:30,887 --> 01:02:35,527
Recreate as much as possible the challenge they had without, of course, killing ourselves.

975
01:02:35,527 --> 01:02:38,264
We brought equipment.

976
01:02:38,264 --> 01:02:39,792
We came prepared.

977
01:02:39,792 --> 01:02:43,189
Our plan was to try to set up similar camps to what they had done.

978
01:02:43,189 --> 01:02:45,028
As closely as possible.

979
01:02:45,028 --> 01:02:46,597
But once we were on the slope,

980
01:02:46,597 --> 01:02:50,467
the slope was so avalanche prone that the whole slope could go.

981
01:02:50,467 --> 01:02:52,605
You could fall to your death.

982
01:02:52,605 --> 01:02:55,669
I didn't like it.

983
01:02:55,669 --> 01:02:58,381
I thought the only thing to do here is just push and to go all the way to the top in one day.

984
01:02:58,381 --> 01:03:01,307
Once you hit the ridge, you're safe of avalanches.

985
01:03:01,307 --> 01:03:03,520
Nothing is going to fall on you.

986
01:03:03,520 --> 01:03:05,892
And so it was a brutal day.

987
01:03:05,892 --> 01:03:07,624
It was a really hard day.

988
01:03:07,624 --> 01:03:10,426
We pushed really hard and went all the way up.

989
01:03:10,426 --> 01:03:13,757
Basically, covering the distance that Nando and Roberto covered in three days.

990
01:03:13,757 --> 01:03:16,223
It was exhausting.

991
01:03:16,223 --> 01:03:21,193
When you are in the mountains, it is much harder to judge distances and sizes.

992
01:03:21,193 --> 01:03:28,113
They valleys they climbed down on are just immense.

993
01:03:28,113 --> 01:03:31,306
There is a picture that we took where you see this little dot.

994
01:03:31,306 --> 01:03:35,454
Just a black little speck there.

995
01:03:35,454 --> 01:03:38,350
It's actually Myau, one of our expedition members.

996
01:03:38,350 --> 01:03:42,787
Once you see that little dot, you realize the size of the valley you're looking at.

997
01:03:42,787 --> 01:03:45,919
It's very, very huge mountains all around you.

998
01:03:45,919 --> 01:03:48,963
It is really a very humbling experience.

999
01:03:48,963 --> 01:03:52,924
>> What I remember of the ten days with Roberto,

1000
01:03:52,924 --> 01:03:58,547
it's like blurred images of continuous and strenuous effort.

1001
01:03:58,547 --> 01:04:01,000
It was so huge.

1002
01:04:01,000 --> 01:04:05,313
The mountains are so huge that it looks like you don't make any progress.

1003
01:04:05,313 --> 01:04:12,149
And you think, "I'll get there in two or three hours or five hours."

1004
01:04:12,149 --> 01:04:14,120
But it is so huge that you never get there.

1005
01:04:14,120 --> 01:04:18,974
The only way you go forward is because you can't go back.

1006
01:04:18,974 --> 01:04:25,909
>> Nando and Roberto as they journeyed out for those ten long, adruous days

1007
01:04:25,909 --> 01:04:28,607
that was an amazing feat,

1008
01:04:28,607 --> 01:04:33,467
and you truly have to think about what they suffered through.

1009
01:04:33,467 --> 01:04:34,645
They can't explain that.

1010
01:04:34,645 --> 01:04:37,977
I think I have an idea of what they went through.

1011
01:04:37,977 --> 01:04:39,563
But it is still quite an amazing feat.

1012
01:04:39,563 --> 01:04:45,058
>> I think it was Roberto that said, "One foot on ground and another foot on snow."

1013
01:04:45,058 --> 01:04:47,088
"This is the line between life and death."

1014
01:04:47,088 --> 01:04:48,959
"I'm going to make it."

1015
01:04:48,959 --> 01:04:50,889
"I'm not going to die out there like everybody else."

1016
01:04:50,889 --> 01:04:52,761
"I'm going to live."

1017
01:04:52,761 --> 01:04:57,964
>> That line where the ice finished for me was the line between life and death for myself.

1018
01:04:57,964 --> 01:05:02,300
>> It was like crossing a very thin line --

1019
01:05:02,300 --> 01:05:04,591
jumping from one side to another one.

1020
01:05:04,591 --> 01:05:06,975
We were very happy.

1021
01:05:06,975 --> 01:05:09,059
>> Now, that the temperatures were warmer,

1022
01:05:09,059 --> 01:05:11,212
now that they are not in such a danger to freeze,

1023
01:05:11,212 --> 01:05:14,452
now they don't have refrigeration for their food.

1024
01:05:14,452 --> 01:05:17,812
And so their food starts going rotten.

1025
01:05:17,812 --> 01:05:20,149
That's a new problem.

1026
01:05:20,149 --> 01:05:34,772


1027
01:05:34,772 --> 01:05:39,313
>> Nando and Roberto had left the 12th of December 1972.

1028
01:05:39,313 --> 01:05:43,006
We were near losing our hopes.

1029
01:05:43,006 --> 01:05:52,073


1030
01:05:52,073 --> 01:05:55,029
>> The next day we were very happy to see things changing

1031
01:05:55,029 --> 01:05:57,623
from no more fear of snow, ice, rock,

1032
01:05:57,623 --> 01:06:00,188
and we begin hearing water.

1033
01:06:00,188 --> 01:06:01,749
It was pouring out.

1034
01:06:01,749 --> 01:06:04,725
Hearing water was going back to normal life.

1035
01:06:04,725 --> 01:06:06,508
And then we saw this river.

1036
01:06:06,508 --> 01:06:09,662
It was growing out of the ice.

1037
01:06:09,662 --> 01:06:14,665
And I saw a green spot there.

1038
01:06:14,665 --> 01:06:17,077
>> I had a grasp of life.

1039
01:06:17,077 --> 01:06:20,374
First when we saw that there was some civilization here --

1040
01:06:20,374 --> 01:06:22,082
We saw a cow.

1041
01:06:22,082 --> 01:06:27,020
So, there must be a human being nearby.

1042
01:06:27,020 --> 01:06:29,583
>> I could see how significant that was for them.

1043
01:06:29,583 --> 01:06:31,456
When you start seeing plants.

1044
01:06:31,456 --> 01:06:32,831
You start seeing a little bit of flowers -- living things.

1045
01:06:32,831 --> 01:06:34,744
And you smell these flowers.

1046
01:06:34,744 --> 01:06:37,629
You haven't smelled anything like that in so many days.

1047
01:06:37,629 --> 01:06:40,195
And little grass you can smell.

1048
01:06:40,195 --> 01:06:42,272
It was just like, "Wow!"

1049
01:06:42,272 --> 01:06:44,496
They talk about starting to find their first signs of civilization,

1050
01:06:44,496 --> 01:06:48,066
and they had a big debate, Nando and Roberto,

1051
01:06:48,066 --> 01:06:50,679
as to whether somebody threw it from a plane or something.

1052
01:06:50,679 --> 01:06:54,229
And Roberto told him, "You can't open a window in a plane."

1053
01:06:54,229 --> 01:06:56,447
"It obviously didn't come from a plane."

1054
01:06:56,447 --> 01:07:01,625
It is the science of humans being here.

1055
01:07:01,625 --> 01:07:03,445
>> I was in a five-star hotel.

1056
01:07:03,445 --> 01:07:05,725
I had water.

1057
01:07:05,725 --> 01:07:07,292
I had grass to eat.

1058
01:07:07,292 --> 01:07:10,093
And I realized what simple things we need to be happy.

1059
01:07:10,093 --> 01:07:13,393
And how we demand lots more than what we need in life.

1060
01:07:13,393 --> 01:07:40,814


1061
01:07:40,814 --> 01:07:46,093
>> The precise moment that I really knew that I was going to survive,

1062
01:07:46,093 --> 01:07:48,332
I was looking towards the west,

1063
01:07:48,332 --> 01:07:51,497
and Roberto was looking towards the north.

1064
01:07:51,497 --> 01:07:54,924
And Roberto said, "Look, Nando, a man on a horse."

1065
01:07:54,924 --> 01:07:58,647
I looked and instantly I saw him.

1066
01:07:58,647 --> 01:08:12,442


1067
01:08:12,442 --> 01:08:15,664
We started to shout both of us.

1068
01:08:15,664 --> 01:08:17,771
Somebody is looking at us.

1069
01:08:17,771 --> 01:08:19,858
It's a human being.

1070
01:08:19,858 --> 01:08:21,728
We couldn't communicate,

1071
01:08:21,728 --> 01:08:23,796
but he looked at us because, obviously,

1072
01:08:23,796 --> 01:08:25,808
he couldn't believe that there were two guys so high up in the mountains.

1073
01:08:25,808 --> 01:08:27,978
>> It was very difficult to communicate across this river

1074
01:08:27,978 --> 01:08:29,108
because of the noise of this raging river.

1075
01:08:29,108 --> 01:08:31,741
You can't cross it.

1076
01:08:31,741 --> 01:08:33,340
There's just no way.

1077
01:08:33,340 --> 01:08:35,756
There's no question.

1078
01:08:35,756 --> 01:08:37,921
If you get down, it'll take you down and you'll drown.

1079
01:08:37,921 --> 01:08:40,181
>> The night came and we lost sight of him.

1080
01:08:40,181 --> 01:08:42,402
And we spent all that night with Roberto,

1081
01:08:42,402 --> 01:08:44,217
I remember, talking and saying,

1082
01:08:44,217 --> 01:08:47,122
"Okay, look we are near civilization, so maybe tomorrow we'll get help."

1083
01:08:47,122 --> 01:08:49,129
"I feel so happy now."

1084
01:08:49,129 --> 01:08:51,327
"How do you feel."

1085
01:08:51,327 --> 01:08:53,362
All those things.

1086
01:08:53,362 --> 01:08:55,501
And we have to get help for the other guys.

1087
01:08:55,501 --> 01:08:59,777
The next morning at around 5:30, 6:00,

1088
01:08:59,777 --> 01:09:01,773
we saw a small fire on the shore --

1089
01:09:01,773 --> 01:09:04,981
at the edge of the river on the other side of the river.

1090
01:09:04,981 --> 01:09:07,449
I was stronger than Roberto, so I went down.

1091
01:09:07,449 --> 01:09:12,184
The sound of the water was so high that we couldn't understand eachohter.

1092
01:09:12,184 --> 01:09:16,486
And this guy with great intelligence and common sense,

1093
01:09:16,486 --> 01:09:19,847
he got a small stone, put a piece of paper around

1094
01:09:19,847 --> 01:09:23,994
it, tied it with a string, and pencil and threw it across the river.

1095
01:09:23,994 --> 01:09:26,376
That's when I wrote that message.

1096
01:09:26,376 --> 01:09:29,333
I come from that plane that fell into the mountains.

1097
01:09:29,333 --> 01:09:32,740
I'm Uruguayan.

1098
01:09:32,740 --> 01:09:34,767
We have been walking for ten days.

1099
01:09:34,767 --> 01:09:37,776
I have a friend up there that is injured.

1100
01:09:37,776 --> 01:09:40,190
In the plane there is still 14 injured people.

1101
01:09:40,190 --> 01:09:43,196
We have to get out of here quickly,

1102
01:09:43,196 --> 01:09:46,292
and we do not know how.

1103
01:09:46,292 --> 01:09:48,421
We don't have any food.

1104
01:09:48,421 --> 01:09:49,926
We are weak.

1105
01:09:49,926 --> 01:09:52,496
When are you going to come and fetch us.

1106
01:09:52,496 --> 01:09:54,623
Please, we can't even walk.

1107
01:09:54,623 --> 01:09:56,772
Where are we?

1108
01:09:56,772 --> 01:09:58,771
For me the most important part is the last sentence.

1109
01:09:58,771 --> 01:10:00,999
"Where are we?"

1110
01:10:00,999 --> 01:10:03,139
We didn't have a clue where we were.

1111
01:10:03,139 --> 01:10:05,245
We knew we were in the Andes in South America,

1112
01:10:05,245 --> 01:10:07,301
but that was our reference point.

1113
01:10:07,301 --> 01:10:09,378
Where are we?

1114
01:10:09,378 --> 01:10:13,939


1115
01:10:13,939 --> 01:10:16,016
I threw it back to him.

1116
01:10:16,016 --> 01:10:18,028
He reads it.

1117
01:10:18,028 --> 01:10:20,126
He looks at me.

1118
01:10:20,126 --> 01:10:22,187
Reads it again.

1119
01:10:22,187 --> 01:10:23,922
He says, "Okay, wait, wait."

1120
01:10:23,922 --> 01:10:27,233
And he got on his horse,

1121
01:10:27,233 --> 01:10:31,493
but before he threw me a little piece of bread and cheese

1122
01:10:31,493 --> 01:10:34,670
that I brought to Roberto.

1123
01:10:34,670 --> 01:10:44,741


1124
01:10:44,741 --> 01:10:47,211
It took him ten hours to go by horseback to the nearest civilization.

1125
01:10:47,211 --> 01:10:52,358
When he got there, he got five or six military men on horseback from a military post.

1126
01:10:52,358 --> 01:10:54,817
And he climbed back, and when they come back,

1127
01:10:54,817 --> 01:10:58,111
we were so happy.

1128
01:10:58,111 --> 01:11:00,541
You were leaving behind horror.

1129
01:11:00,541 --> 01:11:03,659
You were leaving behind death.

1130
01:11:03,659 --> 01:11:06,837
And you embraced life again.

1131
01:11:06,837 --> 01:11:28,188


1132
01:11:28,188 --> 01:11:30,242
And suddenly reality started to shoot on us,

1133
01:11:30,242 --> 01:11:32,623
when we saw that journalist and news men from nowhere

1134
01:11:32,623 --> 01:11:40,607
started to appear in the middle of the mountains.

1135
01:11:40,607 --> 01:12:24,581
>> Nando lost his family.

1136
01:12:24,581 --> 01:12:27,776
And I think this was very devastating for him.

1137
01:12:27,776 --> 01:12:32,318
>> They gave us some food.

1138
01:12:32,318 --> 01:12:33,438
They gave us warm soup.

1139
01:12:33,438 --> 01:12:36,493
I remember and things like that.

1140
01:12:36,493 --> 01:12:38,587
And then they displayed them up,

1141
01:12:38,587 --> 01:12:40,659
and said, "Where are the other guys?"

1142
01:12:40,659 --> 01:12:42,808
And I draw a circle on the map.

1143
01:12:42,808 --> 01:12:44,866
And they said that's Argentina.

1144
01:12:44,866 --> 01:12:47,593
You couldn't have crossed the Andes on foot.

1145
01:12:47,593 --> 01:12:50,951
And I said, "Look, I don't know if that's Argentina, but I know that they are there."

1146
01:12:50,951 --> 01:12:56,212
>> The distance they covered from where the fuselage was to Los Maitenes

1147
01:12:56,212 --> 01:12:59,610
was about 37 miles.

1148
01:12:59,610 --> 01:13:02,081
We measured it with GPS.

1149
01:13:02,081 --> 01:13:07,317
The problem with that number is that these are really long miles.

1150
01:13:07,317 --> 01:13:12,116
>> What Nando and Roberto did still kind of blows me away.

1151
01:13:12,116 --> 01:13:14,263
With literally no training.

1152
01:13:14,263 --> 01:13:16,359
No skills.

1153
01:13:16,359 --> 01:13:18,500
No knowledge of what they were doing and no equipment.

1154
01:13:18,500 --> 01:13:21,102
Somehow they survived.

1155
01:13:21,102 --> 01:13:23,796
>> I had to retrace the expedition.

1156
01:13:23,796 --> 01:13:28,844
I think it's just a really inspiring example of the human spirit --

1157
01:13:28,844 --> 01:13:31,841
Of what humans can do in extreme conditions when there's that strong will

1158
01:13:31,841 --> 01:13:42,690


1159
01:13:42,690 --> 01:13:45,655
>> We heard the Uruguayan Ambassador on the radio that it was official.

1160
01:13:45,655 --> 01:13:48,638
That Canessa and Parrado had appeared.

1161
01:13:48,638 --> 01:13:54,093
Imagine that moment -- what it was like to hear the names: Parrado and Canessa.

1162
01:13:54,093 --> 01:13:59,040
To hear these names was the end of our story -- the end of our pain.

1163
01:13:59,040 --> 01:14:01,241
The end of our fight.

1164
01:14:01,241 --> 01:14:04,340
It was the beginning of our freedom.

1165
01:14:04,340 --> 01:14:06,274
That was what we had fought for.

1166
01:14:06,274 --> 01:14:09,443
Imagine what that was like?

1167
01:14:09,443 --> 01:14:12,116
We were like crazy men around the radio.

1168
01:14:12,116 --> 01:14:15,654
It still gives me goose bumps just thinking about it today --

1169
01:14:15,654 --> 01:14:21,159
hundreds of times and 37 years after it happened still it makes me emotional.

1170
01:14:21,159 --> 01:14:26,839


1171
01:14:26,839 --> 01:14:29,020
>> And that's when they called for helicopters.

1172
01:14:29,020 --> 01:14:31,339
And when the helicopters arrived, this thing happened.

1173
01:14:31,339 --> 01:14:33,547
Where are the guys?

1174
01:14:33,547 --> 01:14:35,709
And I drew the same circle,

1175
01:14:35,709 --> 01:14:37,275
and the pilot looked at me and said,

1176
01:14:37,275 --> 01:14:39,953
"Look, I will never find them."

1177
01:14:39,953 --> 01:14:42,201
"You have to come with us."

1178
01:14:42,201 --> 01:14:44,305
So they took me, put me on the helicopter, .

1179
01:14:44,305 --> 01:14:47,968
strapped me with seat belts, headphones, a microphone, and we took off.

1180
01:14:47,968 --> 01:14:52,688


1181
01:14:52,688 --> 01:14:55,498
The pilot kept telling to me,

1182
01:14:55,498 --> 01:14:57,634
"I don't have enough power."

1183
01:14:57,634 --> 01:14:59,926
"I'm too high for this type of helicopter."

1184
01:14:59,926 --> 01:15:01,432
"Are you sure?"

1185
01:15:01,432 --> 01:15:04,168
"Are you sure you're not lost?"

1186
01:15:04,168 --> 01:15:06,069
No, I'm not lost.

1187
01:15:06,069 --> 01:15:07,736
I know where I am.

1188
01:15:07,736 --> 01:15:09,641
I remember the helicopter shaking,

1189
01:15:09,641 --> 01:15:11,241
and the Plexiglas from the front vibrating.

1190
01:15:11,241 --> 01:15:13,009
It looked like it was coming off the rivets.

1191
01:15:13,009 --> 01:15:14,782
The engine of the helicopter was at full power.

1192
01:15:14,782 --> 01:15:16,537
And finally we crossed over the mountains and then the pilot threw the helicopter down.

1193
01:15:16,537 --> 01:15:18,178
I said, "Look, it's there."

1194
01:15:18,178 --> 01:15:20,017
"It's there."

1195
01:15:20,017 --> 01:15:21,435
And the fuselage was white on white.

1196
01:15:21,435 --> 01:15:25,094
Until we were about 300 yards away,

1197
01:15:25,094 --> 01:15:27,307
he couldn't see it.

1198
01:15:27,307 --> 01:15:29,768
And suddenly he says, "I see."

1199
01:15:29,768 --> 01:15:31,884
"I see."

1200
01:15:31,884 --> 01:16:03,592


1201
01:16:03,592 --> 01:16:28,282
>> Two of my friends jumped into the helicopter,

1202
01:16:28,282 --> 01:16:31,386
and I grabbed Daniel with my hands,

1203
01:16:31,386 --> 01:16:34,530
and the pilot took off.

1204
01:16:34,530 --> 01:16:36,717
He said, "How many do we have?"

1205
01:16:36,717 --> 01:16:38,932
I said, "three, three."

1206
01:16:38,932 --> 01:16:41,093
I said, "Close the doors."

1207
01:16:41,093 --> 01:16:43,271
"Close the doors."

1208
01:16:43,271 --> 01:16:45,334
So I went there.

1209
01:16:45,334 --> 01:16:47,343
I closed the door.

1210
01:16:47,343 --> 01:16:49,034
I closed the other door.

1211
01:16:49,034 --> 01:16:50,974
And I said, "Give me a break, please."

1212
01:16:50,974 --> 01:16:53,948


1213
01:16:53,948 --> 01:16:55,657
These friends of mine embraced me and they were crying and shouting so happy.

1214
01:16:55,657 --> 01:16:58,484
You know, I remember those smiles so big.

1215
01:16:58,484 --> 01:17:00,753
That was a wonderful moment, you know.

1216
01:17:00,753 --> 01:17:11,599


1217
01:17:11,599 --> 01:17:13,941
>> My father called me, and he was crying.

1218
01:17:13,941 --> 01:17:16,037
He said, "Nando is alive."

1219
01:17:16,037 --> 01:17:18,370
"Nando is alive."

1220
01:17:18,370 --> 01:17:20,812


1221
01:17:20,812 --> 01:17:23,003
I was sitting in my bed,

1222
01:17:23,003 --> 01:17:25,178
and hugging me there was my father crying.

1223
01:17:25,178 --> 01:17:27,383
And he was saying, "You were right."

1224
01:17:27,383 --> 01:17:29,766
"He's alive."

1225
01:17:29,766 --> 01:17:34,683
So, that was the way that I knew that Roberto and Nando had appeared.

1226
01:17:34,683 --> 01:17:37,562
>> They were asking in Uruguay to give forth a list of the survivors.

1227
01:17:37,562 --> 01:17:40,330
If it's for Uruguay, then I can give it to the country.

1228
01:17:40,330 --> 01:17:42,900
And then I went about uncovering the names of the boys.

1229
01:17:42,900 --> 01:17:55,187
And I started Fernando Parrado, Antonio Vizintin, until I came to the name of my son.

1230
01:17:55,187 --> 01:18:00,544


1231
01:18:00,544 --> 01:18:02,939


1232
01:18:02,939 --> 01:18:05,250
And it's evident that I had to hold the phone down because of all the force of that name,

1233
01:18:05,250 --> 01:18:08,237
and the surprise and the marvelous feeling of knowing that my son was alive.

1234
01:18:08,237 --> 01:18:11,060
>> I got to the door of the this old hospital,

1235
01:18:11,060 --> 01:18:14,025
and I was shouting that I wanted to go in.

1236
01:18:14,025 --> 01:18:19,303
Nobody could stop me.

1237
01:18:19,303 --> 01:18:22,701
And he was very skinny, but so beautiful.

1238
01:18:22,701 --> 01:18:27,327
And he held my father in his arms,

1239
01:18:27,327 --> 01:18:29,511
and he pulled him out of the floor.

1240
01:18:29,511 --> 01:18:32,107
He was strong.

1241
01:18:32,107 --> 01:18:40,884


1242
01:18:40,884 --> 01:18:43,558
>> People ask me "At that moment did you felt guilt because you were alive?"

1243
01:18:43,558 --> 01:18:45,857
We celebrated life.

1244
01:18:45,857 --> 01:18:48,086
We didn't have any guilt.

1245
01:18:48,086 --> 01:18:50,426
What kind of guilt?

1246
01:18:50,426 --> 01:18:59,143


1247
01:18:59,143 --> 01:19:01,399
>> An airplane with 45 people aboard --

1248
01:19:01,399 --> 01:19:03,800
most of them members of the rugby team from Uruguay crashed on the flight

1249
01:19:03,800 --> 01:19:06,130
from Uruguay crashed on a flight from Montevideo, Uruguay to Santiago, Chile.

1250
01:19:06,130 --> 01:19:08,549
There was a search, but it was abandoned several weeks ago.

1251
01:19:08,549 --> 01:19:10,812
Those mountains are a graveyard for airplanes.

1252
01:19:10,812 --> 01:19:12,982
It is 18,000 feet high.

1253
01:19:12,982 --> 01:19:15,753
They're icy cold, and continuing snow makes visibility there just about zero.

1254
01:19:15,753 --> 01:19:18,657
All those aboard were given up for dead.

1255
01:19:18,657 --> 01:19:22,458
And then today the incredible happened.

1256
01:19:22,458 --> 01:19:27,462
Two starving, exhausted survivors who had hiked for ten days found their way to civilization.

1257
01:19:27,462 --> 01:19:37,843


1258
01:19:37,843 --> 01:19:40,893
>> I think that the biggest psychiatrist in the world

1259
01:19:40,893 --> 01:19:44,853
would never find an answer to the human behavior there.

1260
01:19:44,853 --> 01:19:48,133
>> Would I have done the same thing?

1261
01:19:48,133 --> 01:19:51,349
When it came out in American, everyone in New York was saying:

1262
01:19:51,349 --> 01:19:54,821
How would I have behaved if I'd been in that situation?

1263
01:19:54,821 --> 01:19:59,204
>> In Spain, for instance, the first press release had titles such as --

1264
01:19:59,204 --> 01:20:02,447
"The cannibals have returned."

1265
01:20:02,447 --> 01:20:04,968
>> We had survived on the flesh of our friends,

1266
01:20:04,968 --> 01:20:09,909
and we didn't want to hurt any feelings from the families which were our families too.

1267
01:20:09,909 --> 01:20:14,909
>> These survivors in the most appalling conditions didn't turn into savages.

1268
01:20:14,909 --> 01:20:19,018
They sustained one another.

1269
01:20:19,018 --> 01:20:24,285
They kept their faith in god, and god would bring some of them out of it.

1270
01:20:24,285 --> 01:20:31,959
I think it helped them enormously that when they were still in Chile in hospital

1271
01:20:31,959 --> 01:20:36,037
a priest came by and said you did the right thing.

1272
01:20:36,037 --> 01:20:39,143
And the Catholic Church immediately said they did the right thing.

1273
01:20:39,143 --> 01:20:44,577
The survivors had decided at this point that they wanted a book to be written.

1274
01:20:44,577 --> 01:20:50,312
And they formed a committee to choose the publisher and the author.

1275
01:20:50,312 --> 01:20:53,991
>> They were very afraid of what kind of book would be written.

1276
01:20:53,991 --> 01:20:59,534
Inevitably, the truth showed that some of the survivors had performed in a heroic manner.

1277
01:20:59,534 --> 01:21:03,372
And other in a less heroic manner.

1278
01:21:03,372 --> 01:21:08,014
But I felt that there was no point in writing a book unless you were going to tell the truth.

1279
01:21:08,014 --> 01:21:13,241
The picture of Nando builds up in the book as someone exceptional,

1280
01:21:13,241 --> 01:21:17,642
and in the end a person who saved them all, comes from the other characters.

1281
01:21:17,642 --> 01:21:20,802
It doesn't come from Nando himself.

1282
01:21:20,802 --> 01:21:24,112
>> It's very strange because we came out of the mountain with a same dreams.

1283
01:21:24,112 --> 01:21:27,402
I had my house, my family, everything.

1284
01:21:27,402 --> 01:21:36,326
And when he went to his house, his pictures were at the fireplace with the dead members of his family.

1285
01:21:36,326 --> 01:21:41,129
>> My father, being very pragmatic, said, "He's not coming back."

1286
01:21:41,129 --> 01:21:45,203
So, he gave away my clothes to people, and he sold my motorcycle.

1287
01:21:45,203 --> 01:21:52,317
And he went into a very difficult mental state.

1288
01:21:52,317 --> 01:21:55,187
>> He lovede

1289
01:21:55,187 --> 01:21:58,614
>> He loved my mother and my sister very, very much.

1290
01:21:58,614 --> 01:22:01,838
He cried for them until the end of his life.

1291
01:22:01,838 --> 01:22:05,386
>> Nando tried to follow the normal dreams of a young guy.

1292
01:22:05,386 --> 01:22:09,330
He was completely lost.

1293
01:22:09,330 --> 01:22:12,306
He didn't know what to do or where to go.

1294
01:22:12,306 --> 01:22:17,230
And so I don't know if he was tougher when he was out of the mountain,

1295
01:22:17,230 --> 01:22:20,307
or when he was up there in the mountains.

1296
01:22:20,307 --> 01:22:26,774
>> The Andes made him stronger because he lost his mother and his sister.

1297
01:22:26,774 --> 01:22:31,853
And later, afterwards, he continued with such an amazing force of will

1298
01:22:31,853 --> 01:22:37,041
that really isn't able to be expressed or understood.

1299
01:22:37,041 --> 01:22:43,291
>> When I came back from the Andes I said,

1300
01:22:43,291 --> 01:22:45,997
"Look, what's the most important thing in your life before that?"

1301
01:22:45,997 --> 01:22:50,986
Before the plane crash, my father was the president of the Uruguayan Racing Drivers Association.

1302
01:22:50,986 --> 01:22:53,586
So, he took me to the races since I was very young.

1303
01:22:53,586 --> 01:22:55,989
So, I loved the sound, the cards, the racing.

1304
01:22:55,989 --> 01:22:58,315
And I wanted to race, so I started racing.

1305
01:22:58,315 --> 01:23:01,809
Because I thought it was important for me.

1306
01:23:01,809 --> 01:23:04,252
It has nothing to do with the danger, with fear.

1307
01:23:04,252 --> 01:23:06,991
No, it has to do with what I felt I should do in life.

1308
01:23:06,991 --> 01:23:14,136
I know maybe I'm going to face some dangerous today.

1309
01:23:14,136 --> 01:23:20,233
I don't look back and say, "Well, I had so much fear."

1310
01:23:20,233 --> 01:23:22,589
"I don't want to have fear anymore."

1311
01:23:22,589 --> 01:23:27,636
The main reason in my will of going out of there was seeing my family and my father again.

1312
01:23:27,636 --> 01:23:34,715
So, I thought that naming the highest mountain we climbed this name,

1313
01:23:34,715 --> 01:23:37,761
and it was kind of a gift to him.

1314
01:23:37,761 --> 01:23:43,724
Even though he's gone through this tragic event and lost his mother and his sister,

1315
01:23:43,724 --> 01:23:49,545
he decided that rather than grieve and completely shut down why not revel in life?

1316
01:23:49,545 --> 01:23:53,200
Why not revel in the fact that I survived this.

1317
01:23:53,200 --> 01:23:55,802
And if anything I think he kicked it up a notch,

1318
01:23:55,802 --> 01:23:58,704
and said, "I'm going to take advantage of this life I have,

1319
01:23:58,704 --> 01:24:00,935
and do the things I love rather than not do anything at all."

1320
01:24:00,935 --> 01:24:04,089
>> And through cars, I found a beautiful girl.

1321
01:24:04,089 --> 01:24:06,486
I married her.

1322
01:24:06,486 --> 01:24:09,718
We have been married for more than 30 years.

1323
01:24:09,718 --> 01:24:12,917
I was blessed the moment I decided I had to race cars.

1324
01:24:12,917 --> 01:24:17,321
>> Two years ago, we all went to the crash site together.

1325
01:24:17,321 --> 01:24:21,892
It was an incredible experience.

1326
01:24:21,892 --> 01:24:28,674
And I think that in some sense, it was a way for him to show his daughters where they were born.

1327
01:24:28,674 --> 01:24:33,371
Because had Nando not walked out -- not done what he did,

1328
01:24:33,371 --> 01:24:36,477
they never would have been born.

1329
01:24:36,477 --> 01:24:40,353
So, it was a way of showing them the beginning of their lives.

1330
01:24:40,353 --> 01:24:44,944
>> I have had a fantastic life.

1331
01:24:44,944 --> 01:24:47,620
I have a fantastic family.

1332
01:24:47,620 --> 01:24:54,625
I'm doing what I love, which is appreciated in the astonishing fact of being alive.

1333
01:24:54,625 --> 01:24:57,301
Every day.

1334
01:24:57,301 --> 01:24:59,634
Every single breath.

1335
01:24:59,634 --> 01:25:04,095


1336
01:25:04,095 --> 01:25:07,685
>> We went back to Chile with Roberto and Gustavo and our families,

1337
01:25:07,685 --> 01:25:13,359
and we were driving through this dirt roads, climbing the mountains, and suddenly

1338
01:25:13,359 --> 01:25:19,875
we see a man on a horse coming down the mountain on the side of this small road.

1339
01:25:19,875 --> 01:25:22,591
And we drive past him and it was Sergio.

1340
01:25:22,591 --> 01:25:25,827
We recognized him.

1341
01:25:25,827 --> 01:25:29,173
So, we stopped the car, and Roberto and I run towards him.

1342
01:25:29,173 --> 01:25:31,497
I say, "Hey sir."

1343
01:25:31,497 --> 01:25:34,016
"Please stop."

1344
01:25:34,016 --> 01:25:36,336
"Stop."

1345
01:25:36,336 --> 01:25:38,239
"We are lost."

1346
01:25:38,239 --> 01:25:40,241
"Can you help us?"

1347
01:25:40,241 --> 01:25:42,203
"Can you tell us where we should go to?"

1348
01:25:42,203 --> 01:25:44,198
And he looked at us and started crying.

1349
01:25:44,198 --> 01:25:46,140
I have that photograph of Sergio and the two of us.

1350
01:25:46,140 --> 01:25:48,113
35 years later we remember him,

1351
01:25:48,113 --> 01:25:49,770
and whenever we can we go and visit him.

1352
01:25:49,770 --> 01:25:52,024
>> [Announcer] Ladies and gentleman, please welcome Mr. Nando Parrado.

1353
01:25:52,024 --> 01:25:53,982
[Applause]

1354
01:25:53,982 --> 01:26:01,857
>> Sometimes it's difficult to speak about ones self, you know,

1355
01:26:01,857 --> 01:26:06,196
but it's nice to feel that sometimes you can give something back.

1356
01:26:06,196 --> 01:26:11,068
I don't know if I have a message.

1357
01:26:11,068 --> 01:26:14,426
I can share what I feel and what I learned,

1358
01:26:14,426 --> 01:26:17,044
and what my life has brought me to.

1359
01:26:17,044 --> 01:26:19,739
It's hard sometimes, you know.

1360
01:26:19,739 --> 01:26:23,048
Life is simpler than than it looks.

1361
01:26:23,048 --> 01:26:25,886
For me love is the most important thing in the world.

1362
01:26:25,886 --> 01:26:28,324
The love for our families kept us alive.

1363
01:26:28,324 --> 01:26:31,184


1364
01:26:31,184 --> 01:26:49,904


1365
01:26:49,904 --> 01:26:54,354
You know I would also like to honor all of the people that were on that plane,

1366
01:26:54,354 --> 01:26:57,246
because instead of Nando here, Marcelo could be here,

1367
01:26:57,246 --> 01:27:02,955
Guido, Arturo, Alexis, Gaston.

1368
01:27:02,955 --> 01:27:05,966
Why am I here and not them.

1369
01:27:05,966 --> 01:27:08,486
That's one of the questions we'll never have an answer.

1370
01:27:08,486 --> 01:27:11,130
I say, "Susie, I wish, that you were here."

1371
01:27:11,130 --> 01:27:14,604
"That we never would have boarded that airplane."

1372
01:27:14,604 --> 01:27:22,089
"I send you the biggest and warmest embrace I could give where ever you are."

1373
01:27:22,089 --> 01:27:24,773
And "You are always in my heart."

1374
01:27:24,773 --> 01:27:26,943