Will to Live: Dispatches from the Edge of Survival

by Les Stroud

  There are 1,700 Waorani living in an area covering more than eight thousand square miles of thick jungle. Most of the villages are slowly becoming modernized. A few of them have electricity from diesel generators; some even have sanitation and running water. Each village is a hard one-to-four-day hike from the next.

  But a stay in a fully equipped village doesn’t make for a great survival story, so I’ve elected to go primitive and stay with a splinter group of a few families that, believe it or not, long for the old days. No, they don’t want a return to the violence and killings, but they do want to return to jungle ways, where days are spent hunting for monkeys with a blowgun or wading in the streams with fishnets in hand.

  There is yet another splinter group that was somewhat less inviting. Years ago, a group of Waorani natives took off into the jungle, just over a day’s paddle downstream. The Tagaedi, as they are now called, are one of nearly seventy tribes that live deep (much deeper than I currently am) in the Amazon. No one who has tried to contact them has ever come back alive. To make matters even more intimidating for me, only three weeks before our visit, some of the Waorani from another village went down and killed sixteen Tagaedi. Hostility and tension fill the already thick jungle air. I realize I am about to be alone for a week in a territory rife with retribution.

  Our village is a much different story. We have a number of hosts, none of whom speak English. Badiana is a thirty-year-old woman with a wonderfully sweet disposition. Kinta and Ippa, both about fifty, are the main organizers of the village. Tomo and his wife, Anna, both over sixty, have come up from their own, even smaller, village farther downstream to be here for Jim. And then there is Duey. He is one of the Waorani who massacred the five missionaries by spear. I could be greatly intimidated, even afraid, but before my time here is finished, I will find it as gut-wrenching to leave these people as I would my own family.

  As my guide, Tomo will become like a brother. His appearance is striking. His skin is like leather and his toes are splayed out wide from walking barefoot in the jungle his entire life. In fact, the Waorani only started wearing clothes because outsiders were uncomfortable with their nakedness and they had grown weary of the staring. Clothing in the jungle rots quickly, and not much will last beyond a few weeks. Nakedness wasn’t simply an aesthetic choice, it was a practical matter. For the Waorani, to wear one lone string around the waist is to be considered dressed; the absence of the string is shameful nudity. Men tie the string to their foreskins to pull their penises up and out of the way when tromping through the jungle.

  In the jungle, the night closes in quickly. There are no sunsets, no big skies. Some would find it claustrophobic, even creepy. Not me. For me, the night lies heavy, like a thick blanket, and the sounds are amplified, even ear-piercing. Over there, a frog croaks. Behind me, a night bird calls. Not far off, a puma growls. Somewhere out there, probably within a stone’s throw, a jaguar’s large paws tramp the jungle floor.

  Jim, Laura, and I are mellowing out as we lie in our hammocks, waiting for the Waorani evening meal to begin. Not many people visit the Waorani. Missionaries, anthropologists, and the odd magazine writer will go to the effort to come this deep into the heart of the Amazon. But we are different. The Waorani know I want to survive a week alone in their jungle, a desire that prompts ongoing jests about what a great meal I’ll be for the jaguar. I tentatively join the laughter, until I am told that the Waorani will do anything to avoid being caught alone in the jungle at night.

  Okay, so they consider us crazy. But we also have a woman in our group, something the Waorani find even more fascinating. Few females venture this far into the jungle. Badiana thinks Laura is absolutely beautiful and is so happy to have another woman to connect with, if only through hand signals.

  Though we have brought our own food, Anna and Ippa are only too happy to feed us—constantly, it seems. Mostly it’s manioc, a root much like potato, along with whatever is caught that day, usually some kind of fish or bird. But the treasured treat is manioc drink. First, the root is boiled and mashed by hand. Then the mash is chewed by female village elders before being spit back into the bowl. The saliva begins a process of fermentation, and the mixture is left to sit overnight. The next morning, it is mixed with hot water and ready to drink. You are expected to guzzle, not sip, your old-lady-chewed, slightly fermented drink, as sipping is considered an insult. It is also an insult to put down your food bowl once you have picked it up.

  My concerns that it would be inconvenient for the Waorani to feed, house, and guide us are quickly put to rest when Jim explains that it is, in fact, their honor. They are thrilled that someone cares enough to want to learn and experience their traditional, and quickly disappearing, way of life. Jim himself is like a legend to them; some of the younger Waorani even come into the hut just to get a glimpse of the famous Warika. During the ten years that Jim and his wife, Kathy, spent living among the Waorani, he became an indispensable part of helping the Waorani achieve ownership of territory in the jungles of Ecuador. Tomo respects and cares for Jim greatly, but when Duey arrives later that evening, the love and friendship is even more evident.

  Waorani don’t have words for hello or goodbye, so Duey simply sheds tears as he hugs Jim in greeting. Duey has walked for a day and a half through thick jungle just to see Jim. It was Duey who organized the men and women of the tribe to come into our hut to sing for us this first evening. It is by far the crudest, most rudimentary form of music I have ever heard. There is only the faintest hint of form or melody, and no pitch or tuning at all for the rustic percussion instruments and flutes. Each song is a repetitive chanting of one or two lines of lyric. It is beautiful. I sit in the firelight as seven Waorani treat us to their traditional storytelling songs. I breathe deep and hold back tears. The honor is purely ours. In the middle of the night, I am awakened by Duey chanting and praying in a loud voice. Jim explains that this is a holdover from his days of existing as part of a more violent culture. You stayed awake in shifts and talked and sang so that your enemy knew you were awake and couldn’t attack you by surprise.

  The next day, after our breakfast of manioc, we wait patiently in the hut, hanging around, literally, in our hammocks while the rain falls. It rains nearly every day here, usually for many hours, and often as a downpour. Once the rain stops, the sun beats down through any small opening in the jungle canopy like a fiery hammer on your head. Before long, our hosts arrive; my training is about to begin. Kinta and Ippa wear traditional clothing on their upper bodies: leaves and feathers on their heads, woven plant fiber and decorations around their necks.

  My first lesson is in the art of hunting by blowgun, a survival priority. If you can’t hunt or fish, you can’t survive. Village kids can point a two-yard-long blowgun heavenward and hit a hummingbird sixty yards away. I practice on coconuts, and Tomo cheers every time I hit my mark. Maybe I’ll survive in the jungle after all!

  Tomo has his own near-death story to tell. He once hit a monkey with a dart from his blowgun. As it fell, the monkey got caught on a branch. Tomo climbed seventy feet up the tree to knock the monkey down. High up in the jungle canopy, he grazed a small poisonous caterpillar. The toxic shock was so powerful that his whole body was jolted out of the tree and he fell to the ground. He was taken to the village hospital, where he remained for three weeks. His entire body turned completely black from the caterpillar toxin. Things were looking grim when an entomologist was found in Brazil who not only recognized the poisoning but had developed an antidote. Tomo’s life was saved, and he hadn’t broken a single bone.

  The Amazon is home to countless millions of poisonous snakes, spiders, frogs, ants, bees, wasps, fish, and caterpillars. Can I survive here? Many of the survival methods I teach in North America are backward in the jungle. In North America, for example, you never stand on or jump off a log for fear of breaking an ankle. In the jungle, however, you always stand on logs before you cross them, because most poisonous snakebites occur when you step over the log, oblivio
us to the snakes hiding on the underside. I also learn to tromp heavily, as the vibrations will often cause the snakes to slither out of your way.

  My next tutorial involves net fishing in the small, muddy jungle streams. This time, the women take over as my teachers. As Anna shows me how to shove my net deep into the muddy water to corner the fish, Laura, who was busy trying to get some video footage, falls backward into the murky stream. When she surfaces, the first words out of my mouth are “Is the camera okay?” Everything we do, we do as a group, including laughing together.

  It is the night before I am to set out on my week-long survival test. Tomorrow, I will be deposited in the heart of the jungle, alone. Before sleeping, I take my satellite phone out to the airstrip to call home. It is my only link to the outside world, and on this night I need to hear familiar voices. Instead, I hear a low growl from about sixty yards away in the pitch-black jungle. I make a beeline back to the hut. The growl belongs to a full-grown puma that has been hanging around the area.

  Sleep proves difficult. I’m more anxious about this survival stay than any other, yet I’m also exhilarated; surviving in the Amazon jungle is my personal quest. Bug screening covers my hammock. This is good, given that our hut is filled with annoying, biting gnats. Also, the alternative—sleeping on the floor while thousands of army ants and the odd tarantula crawl over me—is worse. Before we embark in the morning, the elders ceremoniously paint my back and arms with ink made from plant dyes. I am immediately swarmed by bees. They, along with wasps and butterflies, will be my constant companions for the next seven days.

  My greatest insect foe, though, is a huge, two-inch-long ant they called the manyi (or bullet) ant. It has a monster-sized set of chompers on the front end and a massive stinger on the rear. A sting from one of these ants is said to feel the same as jamming a pair of red-hot pliers into your skin, twisting it hard, and holding it there. The pain doesn’t diminish for at least five hours. The Waorani fear this bite more than snakebites, yet I’m amazed when one of the kids skillfully catches one for me using a small piece of grass twisted like a noose. In the days to come, I will step barefoot beside at least six of these devils.

  I will also plunge my hands deep into muddy riverbanks in search of catfish, praying I don’t instead get a handful of electric eel—or a fresh-water stingray, the most feared creature of all. I will suspend disbelief and do a number of things that go against all my instincts. But this is jungle-style survival, and all bets are off. My crew, including paramedic Barry Clark, will wait for me back in the village, just in case.

  On day six of my week alone in the jungle, I go for a short walk to relieve myself at the end of the day while the sun is setting. I look up to see a huge spotted jaguar not more than fifteen yards away. Concentrating on slowing my breathing and keeping the monster cat in sight, I slowly make my way back to my bush camp. I hadn’t planned on following the jungle trail home until tomorrow, but this unexpected visitor is reason enough to cut this adventure short. I don’t mind suffering for my art, but I’m not interested in getting eaten for it.

  The sun is setting and darkness falling fast as I start to pick my way home. The trail is small and tangled, and I use the video camera’s night-vision function to guide my way. I set a quick pace, constantly searching for the jaguar. The big cat stalks me all the way back to the village.

  After what seems like an eternity, I come to the edge of the airstrip and hastily make my way into the fenced enclosure of the village. I’ve made it. Barely.

  Later that night, as I lie exhausted and spent in a hammock that now feels like the ultimate in luxury, Jim wakes me up. “Listen,” he says, and motions to the side of our hut. Clearly audible is the growl of the jaguar; he will continue to circle the village all night. The next day, Kinta hikes out to where I first saw the big cat and tells me that, by the size of the prints scattered all over the equipment I’d left behind, he is a 250-pound male.

  Although Survivorman is now part of my past, people always ask what my favorite location was. Suffice it to say that I have never been so profoundly affected and full of awe as I was in the Amazon, the land of Waorani.

  Chapter 3 - “I Will Not Die on This Mountain”

  IN THE PANTHEON OF SURVIVAL STORIES, THERE ARE THOSE THAT STAND TALL AMONG THEIR PEERS AS TRULY EPIC, STORIES THAT ARE SPOKEN OF WITH AWE, EVEN AMONG THOSE WHO HAVE LIVED THROUGH THEIR OWN ORDEALS. THE STORY OF NANDO PARRADO AND THE FORTY-FOUR OTHER PEOPLE WHO BOARDED A CHARTER FLIGHT FROM MONTEVIDEO, URUGUAY, TO SANTIAGO, CHILE, ON OCTOBER 13, 1972, IS ONE OF THOSE. FOR MORE THAN TWO MONTHS, THEY ENDURED SOME OF THE MOST HORRIFIC CONDITIONS IMAGINABLE BEFORE TWO AMONG THEM MADE A FINAL, DESPERATE TREK INTO THE HEART OF THE ANDES TO TRY TO FIND HELP.

  Along with some friends and family, Nando Parrado and his fellow members of the Old Christians Rugby Club were on their way to Santiago to play an exhibition match against a Chilean team. Spirits were high as the players, most in their early twenties, boarded the Fairchild twin-engine turboprop for the three-and-a-half-hour flight across the Andes. But when the pilots heard of bad weather in the mountains ahead, they decided to set down for the evening in the small town of Mendoza, just on the eastern edge of the great mountain range. The weather had not improved significantly the next day, and the pilots struggled to make a decision. Nando and his teammates, full of the piss and vinegar that so often defines young athletes, jeered the pilots for not daring to attempt the passage across the mountains. Eventually, the pilots acquiesced, and they took off shortly after 2 p.m. on October 14.

  The flight was uneventful at the start. The boys laughed, played cards, and marveled at the vastness of the Andes below them. Here was a mountain range like few of them had ever conceived of, let alone seen. Given that some of the mountains in the range easily eclipsed the maximum cruising altitude of the Fairchild (22,500 feet), the pilots had charted a course through narrow Planchon Pass, where the ridges were low enough to allow passage of the craft.

  Yet, as is often the case in these situations, the break in the weather that the pilots had hoped for never materialized, and the steward was soon asking the passengers to fasten their seat belts due to approaching turbulence. The Fairchild pitched and moaned in the ferocious wind, and at one point lost several hundred feet of altitude in a matter of seconds. When the cloud cover stubbornly refused to lift, the pilots were forced to rely on dead reckoning for navigation. Nando leaned forward to comfort his mother, Eugenia, and sister, Susy, who were accompanying him on the trip. Seconds later, Panchito Abal, one of Nando’s best friends, pointed out the window. Through the sporadic break in the thick cloud they could see the dark walls of the mountains flying past, not more than fifty feet away. The engines whined as the plane tried desperately to climb. Seconds later, all hell broke loose.

  The Fairchild careened off the mountain and the fuselage split into two pieces, with the tail section falling away. Everybody sitting behind Nando was lost immediately, including one of his best friends, Guido Magri. Miraculously, the front section of fuselage hit the snow at almost precisely the same angle as the slope itself, preventing it from disintegrating on impact. Instead, the severed plane careered down the icy mountainside like a runaway toboggan at speeds near 200 miles per hour.

  The fuselage eventually slammed into a snow berm, partially crushing the nose of the craft and dooming the pilot and copilot. The force of the impact ripped all the remaining seats from their anchors and hurtled them to the front of the plane, killing several of those who had survived the initial impact. All told, thirteen people were already dead once the plane came to a fitful rest on the side of what is now known as Mount Seler.

  Nando lay unconscious as the others began their survival ordeal. Gustavo Zerbino and Roberto Canessa, both medical students, took stock of the living. Amazingly, some of the players had suffered only minor scrapes and bruises, while others had far more gruesome injuries. Enrique Platero was impaled by a steel pipe during the crash; when Gustavo pulled out the pipe, a few inches
of Enrique’s intestine came with it. The calf muscle on one of Rafael Echavarren’s legs had been almost completely torn off the bone and was dangling around the front of the leg.

  Almost instinctively, Marcelo Perez del Castillo assumed his position as leader of the group and earned his C as team captain. He was brilliant in the early moments after the crash, organizing the uninjured and setting them to work to help the others. This was the perfect response, because it was action—proactive action, which is vital to making it through any kind of survival ordeal. Action immediately dispels panic, which can be horribly contagious in grim situations. While you might almost expect panic to have occurred, it didn’t. I believe Marcelo was instrumental in keeping this runaway emotion at bay, which in turn likely helped save lives. It gave people something to focus on other than the sheer terror of their circumstances.

  Now came the first of many difficult decisions the survivors would have to make: who would get attention first and who would be left to possibly die. In other words, triage. Search and rescue teams receive extensive training on what kind of victim is most likely to survive an accident; these people receive attention first. Gustavo and Roberto did the same, working their way through the plane, determining which victims they would spend their energies on and which were too close to death to warrant aid. The dead were removed from the fuselage and moved outside; the injured were carried gently out to the snow while those fit enough for work set to the task of clearing the debris from the plane. Though they may not have realized it at the time, the decision to move the injured out into the snow was brilliant. The cold began to dull their pain. Anyone who has ever iced an injury knows that, once the pain of the cold eventually subsides, the pain of the injury does as well. This move certainly slowed the metabolic processes of many of the injured, thereby improving their chances of survival.