Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors

by Piers Paul Read

  ‘Wild cows? You don’t get wild cows in the Andes. I tell you, Nando, that somewhere quite close to here we’ll find the owner of those cows, or some man who’s looking after them.’ And as if to prove that what he said was true, he pointed to the stumps of trees that had been axed by human hands. ‘Don’t tell me that tapirs or wild cows cut down those trees.’

  Parrado could not dispute that the marks on the wood were those of an axe, and a little farther down the valley they found a shelter for cattle made of branches and brushwood which the two boys immediately recognized as excellent fuel for a fire. They decided to stop there for the night and celebrate their imminent salvation by feasting on the meat they had left.

  ‘After all,’ said Canessa. ‘It’s going rotten. And we’re sure to find some sort of shepherd or farmer in the morning. Tomorrow night, I promise you, Nando, we’ll be sleeping in a house.’

  They took off their knapsacks, unpacked the meat, and lit a fire. Then they roasted ten pieces each, ate until their stomachs would not take any more and lay in their sleeping bag, waiting for the sun to set.

  Now that rescue seemed so certain, they allowed themselves to think of things that until then had been too painful to contemplate. Canessa told Parrado about Laura Surraco and described lunch at her house on a Sunday; Parrado in turn told Roberto about the girls he had known before the crash and how he envied him his steady girl friend.

  The fire died down. The sun set. And with these pleasant thoughts in their minds, the two bloated boys fell asleep.

  3

  When they awoke next morning the cows had disappeared. This did not alarm them. They discarded what they thought they would never need again – the hammer, the sleeping bag, a pair of extra shoes, and a layer of clothes. With their loads lightened they set off again, expecting to find around every outcrop of rock the house of a Chilean peasant. As the morning wore on, however, the valley continued much as it had been. Indeed, there were not even those signs of man such as the soup tin, and the horseshoe which had so encouraged them the day before, and Parrado began to chide Canessa for his optimism. ‘So you know so much about the country, do you? So I’m just a poor fool who only knows about cars and motor-bikes? Well, at least I wasn’t so sure there was a farmhouse around the next corner.… Now we’ve eaten half the meat and thrown away the sleeping bag.’

  ‘The meat’s gone bad anyway,’ said Canessa, his temper not improved by the first uncomfortable feelings of an attack of diarrhoea. He was also increasingly exhausted. His whole body ached, and each step he took added to his agony. All his will had to be used to put one foot in front of the other – and when he stopped or fell behind, Parrado’s curses and insults would urge him on again.

  Late in the morning they came to a particularly difficult outcrop of rock where there was a choice between a shorter but more perilous route near the river or a longer but safer path over the top of the promontory. Parrado, who walked ahead of Canessa, took the more prudent route and began to clamber up the rock, but Canessa felt too tired to afford such caution, and when he came to the same spot he set off at a lower level where the ground fell away steeply towards the river below.

  When he had climbed only halfway round the outcrop, stepping from foothold to foothold or moving along ledges of rock, the threatening storm broke in his bowels; his stomach was suddenly churned with the dreadful discomfort of acute diarrhoea. So sharp were the waves of this disorder that Canessa was forced to find a level piece of rock, remove his three pairs of trousers, and crouch in an attempt to relieve it. In normal circumstances this would not have taken long, but here the one irregularity had been preceded by its opposite. The explosive excreta were firmly plugged into his lower colon by the rock-hard by-products of his earlier constipation, and it was only by removing these with his hands that Canessa was able to discharge what was playing such havoc in his stomach.

  Parrado, meanwhile, had reached the other side and begun to be alarmed and annoyed that there was no sign of his companion. He shouted for him and heard muffled sounds in reply. He started to curse Canessa for the delay and continued to do so until the thin, miserable figure came into view along the steep edge of the riverbank.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ asked Parrado.

  ‘I had diarrhoea. I feel terrible.’

  ‘Well, listen. There’s some sort of track here which goes along the side of the river. If we follow that we’re sure to get somewhere.’

  ‘I can’t go on,’ said Canessa, sinking to the ground.

  ‘You must go on. Do you see that plateau?’ He pointed down the valley to a raised piece of land. ‘We’ve got to get there by tonight.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said Canessa. ‘I’m too tired. I can’t walk any more.’

  ‘Don’t be so stupid. You can’t give up just when we’re getting somewhere.’

  ‘I tell you I’ve got diarrhoea.’

  Parrado flushed with irritation and impatience. ‘You’re always ill. Look, I’ll take your knapsack so now you won’t have any more excuses.’ With that he picked up Canessa’s load and set off with both packs on his back. ‘And if you want anything to eat,’ he shouted back at Canessa, ‘you’d better come on, because now I’ve got all the meat.’

  Canessa stumbled after him – wretched and lame – and inwardly he too was furious, not so much with Parrado for scoffing at his illness as with himself for his weakness.

  It was easier to walk on the track, and every now and then they were encouraged by signs of horse dung. The symptoms of diarrhoea abated in Canessa, and both boys fell into a rhythm of walking. Before them lay the plateau, and as the afternoon progressed it drew nearer. Now that they were out of the snow, distance was easier to assess. By late afternoon they had reached the escarpment which led up to it, and the promise of rest at the top gave Canessa the extra strength to follow the steep path up onto the plateau.

  The first thing they saw was a corral with stone walls and a gate. In the middle there was a post driven into the ground which was used for tying horses. The ground of the enclosure had been freshly broken by horses’ hoofs, and both boys felt all their optimism return, but Canessa’s physical condition had so deteriorated that it could not be restored by such a simple tonic as renewed hope. He staggered as he walked, and had to lean on Parrado’s arm, and when they came to a small copse of trees they both agreed that they would stay there the night. It was in the minds of both of them that Canessa might have to stay longer.

  While Parrado went in search of wood for a fire, and to see if by any chance there was some human habitation quite near to where they were, Canessa lay back under the trees. The ground was covered with fresh grass, the mountains rose up behind them, and the sound of the river could be heard from several hundred yards away where it crashed down through the gorge. Exhausted though he was – tired in every limb, almost to the point of extinction – the beauty of the spot was not lost on Canessa. He looked languidly at the gorse and the wild flowers, and his thoughts turned to his horse and his dog and the countryside of Uruguay.

  He looked up, then, and saw Parrado returning towards him, his tall figure bowed with anxiety. Canessa lifted himself up on his elbow. ‘What’s it like?’ he asked.

  Parrado shook his head. ‘Not so good. There’s another river which joins this one. It cuts right across our path, and I don’t see how we can cross either.’

  Canessa sank back and Parrado sat down beside him. ‘But I saw two horses and two cows,’ he said.

  ‘On this side of the river?’

  ‘Yes. On this side of the river,’ He hesitated and then added, ‘Do you know how to kill a cow?’

  ‘Kill a cow?’

  ‘The meat’s rotten. We’ll need more food.’

  ‘I don’t know how to kill a cow,’ said Canessa.

  ‘Well, I’ve got an idea,’ said Parrado, leaning forward with a kind of earnest enthusiasm. ‘I know now that they sleep under some trees. Tomorrow while they’re grazing I’ll climb one of th
e trees with a rock, and when they come back at night I’ll drop the rock on the head of one of the cows.’

  Canessa laughed. ‘You’ll never kill a cow like that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You’d never get up a tree with a big enough rock … and anyway, they might not sleep in the same place.’

  Parrado thought to himself in silence. Then suddenly his face lit up with another idea. ‘I know what,’ he said. ‘We’ll take some branches and make them into spears.’

  Canessa shook his head.

  ‘Or hit them on the head?’

  ‘No. You’ll never get one like that.’

  ‘Then what do you suggest?’

  Canessa shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Come and see for yourself. They’re just lying there.’ Parrado hesitated again. ‘There are the horses, though. Do you think they might go for us?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘What do you think, then?’

  ‘Well, first of all I think that killing a cow won’t make the owner of the cow inclined to help us.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘It might be better if we could milk a cow.’

  ‘But you’ve got to catch it to milk it.’

  ‘I know,’ Canessa pondered this question. ‘I know what,’ he said. ‘We could lasso a calf with the luggage straps and tie it to a tree. Then, when the mother comes to it, we could grab her.’

  ‘Wouldn’t she get away?’

  ‘Not if we tied her with a strap.’

  ‘But how would we take the milk with us?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘We’d have to have meat.’

  ‘Then we could kill the cow but first cut its tendons so it couldn’t escape.’

  ‘And what about the owner?’

  ‘We’d only do that if there’s no one around.’

  ‘Okay.’ Parrado got to his feet.

  ‘But for God’s sake let’s wait until tomorrow,’ said Canessa. ‘I really can’t do anything else tonight.’

  Parrado looked down at him and saw that what he said was quite true. ‘Let’s light a fire anyway,’ he said. ‘Then if anyone’s around there’ll be more chance that they’ll see us.’

  Parrado wandered away from Canessa in search of broken branches and brushwood. Canessa lay back again and looked vacantly towards the other side of the river. The setting sun gave long shadows to the trees and boulders at the foot of the mountain which made them seem to move and change shape. Then suddenly, from out of these shadows, there came a moving shape, large enough to be a man on a horse. Canessa immediately tried to get to his feet, but even in his excitement his legs would hardly move, so he shouted to Parrado, ‘Nando, Nando! Look there’s a man on a horse! I think I saw a man on a horse!’

  Parrado looked up and then in the direction that Canessa indicated, but he was so shortsighted that he could not see anything.

  ‘Where?’ he shouted back. ‘I can’t see him.’

  ‘Go, quick! Run! On the other side of the river!’ shrieked Canessa in his high-pitched voice. And as Parrado started to run toward the river, he too began to scramble and crawl over the grass and stones towards the horseman three or four hundred feet away. Every now and then he stopped and looked up to see Parrado running in the wrong direction. ‘No, Nando!’ he would shout. ‘To the right, to the right!’ And hearing him, Parrado would change course and run blindly on – for he still could not see anything on the other side of the river. Moreover, their shouting and waving arms had startled the cows, which had got up and were standing between Parrado and the river. They stared at him with flared nostrils, and the brave Nando was not so brave that he did not make a slight detour to avoid them. In this way he and Canessa reached the edge of the gorge almost simultaneously.

  ‘Where?’ said Parrado. ‘Where’s the man on the horse?’

  To his great dismay, when Canessa looked over the roaring torrent to the spot where he had seen the rider, he saw only a tall rock and its lengthening shadow.

  ‘I’m sure it was a man,’ he said. ‘I swear it. A man on a horse.’

  Parrado shook his head. ‘There’s no one there now.’

  ‘I know,’ said Canessa, sinking onto the ground and lowering his head in disappointment.

  ‘Come on,’ said Parrado, taking his companion by the arm. ‘We’d better get back and light a fire before it gets dark.’

  They had both stood back and faced towards their camp when suddenly, over the splashing thunder of the river, they heard the sound of a human cry. They turned and there, on the other bank, they saw not one but three men on horses. They were staring at them while herding three cows along a narrow path which ran between the river and the mountain.

  Immediately the two boys began to wave their arms and shout at them, and the three horsemen seemed to notice them, but the noise of the river was such that their words did not seem to carry, to the farther bank. Indeed, the interest the horsemen seemed to show in them was almost cursory, and it began to look as if they would ride on without reacting in any particular way to the two Uruguayans.

  Parrado and Canessa became more hectic in their gestures and shouted yet louder that they were survivors from the Uruguayan aeroplane which crashed in the Andes. ‘Help us!’ they shouted. ‘Help us!’ And while Canessa’s voice rose to a new pitch because he thought a high voice would carry farther, Parrado sank to his knees and joined his hands in a gesture of supplication.

  The horsemen hesitated. One of them reined in his horse and shouted some words across the gorge, the only one of which they could decipher was ‘tomorrow’. Then the three rode on, herding the cows in front of them.

  Parrado and Canessa stumbled back to their camp. Parrado was exhausted too, and Canessa could not walk unaided. The one word they had heard, however, was enough to give them enormous hope. At last they had made contact with other men.

  Although both boys were tired, they agreed that they would take turns keeping watch for two hours at a time and keep the fire alight. But in spite of their exhaustion they found it difficult to sleep. They were too excited. Then towards dawn Parrado dropped off and slept beyond the two hours they had agreed. Canessa let him sleep, for he knew that he could not walk any more and that Parrado would need all the strength he could muster for the next day.

  4

  The sun rose on the tenth day of their journey through the Andes. At six both boys were awake, and looking across to the other side of the river they saw the smoke of a fire and a man standing beside it. Next to him there were two other men, both still sitting on their horses. As soon as he saw them, Parrado ran once again towards the edge of the gorge. He was then close enough to the man on the other side to understand his gestures, which directed Parrado to climb down the side of the gorge to the edge of the river. This he did, and the peasant did the same until they were only separated by the thirty-five yards of the torrent itself. Though they were now closer, the noise of the cascading water was even louder than before and there was no question of speaking to one another, but the peasant, who had a round, cunning face crowned with a straw hat, had come prepared. He took a piece of paper, wrote on it, wrapped it around a stone, and threw it across the river.

  Parrado stumbled over the rocks, picked up this missive, and unwrapped it. There he read:

  There is a man coming later that I told him to go. Tell me what you want.

  Parrado immediately felt in his pockets for a pencil or pen but found that he only had a stick of lipstick. He therefore gestured to the opposite bank that he had nothing with which to write; whereupon the peasant took his own ballpoint pen, wrapped it with a stone in a blue and white checked handkerchief, and threw it across the river.

  When Parrado had this he sat down and feverishly wrote the following message:

  I come from a plane that fell in the mountains. I am Uruguayan. We have been walking for ten days. I have a friend up there who is injured. In the plane there are still fourteen injured people. We have
to get out of here quickly and we don’t know how. We don’t have any food. We are weak. When are you going to come and fetch us? Please. We can’t even walk. Where are we?

  He added to this an sos in lipstick and wrapped the piece of paper around the stone and the stone in the handkerchief. Then he threw it back over the river.

  Parrado watched and prayed as the Chilean peasant unwrapped and then read the message. At last he looked up and signalled that he understood. Then he took from his pocket a piece of bread, threw it across the river, waved once again, and turned to climb back up the side of the gorge.

  Parrado did the same. He reached the plateau and walked back towards Canessa, clutching the bread in his hands, a tangible sign that they had finally made contact with the outside world.

  ‘Look,’ he said to Canessa when he reached him, ‘look what I’ve got.’

  Canessa turned his oval face toward his friend and fixed his tired eyes on the bread. ‘We’re saved,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Parrado, ‘we’re saved.’

  He sat down and broke the bread in two. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘Let’s have our breakfast.’

  ‘No,’ said Canessa. ‘You eat it. I’ve been so useless. I don’t deserve it.’

  ‘Come on,’ said Parrado. ‘You may not deserve it, but you need it.’

  He handed the crust to Canessa, and this time Canessa accepted it. Then the two boys sat down and ate what they had been given, and never in their lives had bread tasted so good.

  Two or three hours later – at about nine in the morning – they saw another man on horseback, but this time he was on their side of the river and was riding towards them. Immediately Parrado got to his feet and went to meet him.

  He greeted Parrado with great reticence, concealing the extraordinary impression that must have been made on him by this tall, bearded, bedraggled figure dressed in several suits of filthy clothes. The man followed him to where Canessa lay and listened to the babble from both of them with a patient expression on his weatherbeaten face. When he was allowed to speak he introduced himself as Armando Serda. He had been told that the two Uruguayans were there, but he had understood that they were much farther upstream and had intended to fetch them that afternoon. The man who had seen them had ridden off toward Puente Negro to inform the carabineros of his discovery.