Transcription
We are at the exact spot where the 1972 Andes Snow Society plane went down. Here there is a mass grave where the remains of the deceased rest, as well as parts of the aircraft that have been found over the decades. Exploring, we found something that appears to be a part of the wing of an airplane with the tires of the aircraft, cables, and metal parts scattered everywhere. In this video, we will narrate the journey to get here. We will interview two of the survivors of the event, and we will go into an intense adventure through the Andes Mountains. Undoubtedly, one of the most moving places. This information.
Today, we found a Uruguayan plane lost in the Andes Mountains in October with a youth rugby team. We are in the west of Argentina, very close to the border with Chile, and we are about to embark on a three-day adventure through the Andes to visit the exact spot where the plane of the so-called Odyssey of the Andes went down, where the surviving crew members had to survive in the hardest ways for a period of 72 days. Basically, what happened in a nutshell is that a group of crew members who were leaving from Uruguay to Chile had a major complication in the air in mid-flight, which caused their plane to fall, and they were trapped in the snow, even having to resort to cannibalism for more than two months. Throughout this video, of course, we will be going much deeper into this. We will even talk to survivors who lived these 72, almost 73 days in the flesh and who left a legacy and a very important teaching in humanity. I make this journey in the most respectful way to make a recapitulation of the facts and to see how the site where it happened, 52 years after the tragedy, is today.
We begin the journey in the village of El Sosneado, the last civilization, before we go deep into the Andes. And in fact, we are passing through to stock up on food before heading into the mountains. Hey, it looks like a good cut, a fine cut. If we can get enough for five or six sticks. It's enough. All right. Two of these and some beef, just in case. Then come very cold and harsh conditions of the Andes await us. Let's hit it.
Halfway to base camp, we come across an abandoned hotel. This is the Sosneado hot springs hotel, which, in fact, has been abandoned since 1950. But the structure is very well maintained. And I'm told it's a must-stop. Interestingly, this abandoned structure is only about 25 kilometers from where the plane went down. So many say had they walked in another direction, they might have come here to at least find some shelter, but life circumstances dictated otherwise, and to this day, this hotel remains abandoned without really a talking point to revive it.
A few days ago, when I am recording this journey, I was in Montevideo, Uruguay, and I visited the museum, which is, in fact, dedicated to the Andes event. And there, I was able to talk with Antonio Visintin, alias El Tin Tin, who is also one of the survivors. In fact, he was only 19 years old when he was involved in such an unfortunate nightmare.
I am Antonio Visintin. They call me Tin Tin. I am an expeditionary and a survivor from the Andes of the 1972 accident. How many people survived the event? Sixteen people survived after spending 72 days in the Andes. Or 73. It depends on the group that left at the beginning, in October, when we fell. Almost until the first days of November, we could not do anything. We had to stay inside the plane. The days were very short, and there were storms, and there were a number of meteorological phenomena, and there was also an adaptation on our part to everything we were suffering. We fell, and we had to adapt to being between 20, 30, and 40 degrees below zero.
From this point on, automobiles can no longer pass. From now on, we will move on foot, and our things will help us to carry them. Horses and mules. Here, some guys who received us in their little hut, in their center, are dedicated to renting mules. They load them for you so you can carry all the things you need to set up your camp. Everything you need. Basically, to be able to survive in there. A hike of about 15 kilometers awaits us, in which we will climb close to a thousand meters in altitude. Already from here. It's getting a little more extreme. Do you sleep here? Yes, we sleep here. How hard does it get cold here at night? Only in winter? If it gets what. It gets all snowy. Or how is it, all this part? All snowy? No, man. What a real lifestyle. So extreme, so isolated. Here? No. Impressive work you're doing. And thank you for helping us. Thank you for coming. And I'm glad you're here.
And I also met Ricardo Peña here, who is a long-time explorer. You are Mexican, right? And check this out. Ricardo has a very interesting story about when he once came here to make a trek to the Andes and found Eduardo's jacket, his jacket, his blazer that had been lost for many years. How did this happen? I came here as a mountain guide. What I did was to explore a huge channel where the plane hit and where it came down. At 4200 meters or so, we found blue cloth coming out of the rocks. We dug up the blue cloth, and it turned out to be a blazer, a jacket. In the inside pocket, there was a passport and a wallet, and I'm opening it. It says Eduardo Strauch. And I remembered Strauch because it was the name of the survivors' Strauch cousins. Strauch of the survivors. Wow, this is delicious. What were the odds? Wow, look at this right here.
At a stopping point in the middle of the hike, we met Eduardo Strauch, who is one of the survivors of the Andes tragedy. Of course, everyone who lived through the experience, it was a very hard thing. You don't wish it on anyone, but Eduardo had perhaps one of the hardest jobs of all those who were there. Eduardo was in charge of cutting the meat of those who had sadly passed away so that others could be fed. With my two cousins, we ended up doing a little bit of the governing of that snow society. We were the older ones, and well, we resolved that doing the task ourselves, without it being known who was being used, was going to be less difficult for all the rest of the kids. And well, and we did that. A lot of morbid people have asked me what it likes, has, and what it tastes like. It tastes like life. Maybe having one more day on this planet. Exactly. And luckily, we had 52 more years so far. What is the most valuable lesson that it leaves you? And I say, after having already 50 years of thinking about it and maybe thinking about it every night. To put many things into practice. Exactly. What is the most valuable thing that. I would tell you? That the most valuable thing, or one of the most valuable things, is to have discovered the potential that we human beings have. To have realized that love is fundamental in any circumstance of life. And the third thing I would tell you is not to waste a moment of your life. Do things, anything. Learn, live, be grateful, be alive. When death flies over you for 72 days, you really come to value life and every minute of life that much more.
If doing this journey on horseback is even necessary, there are parts where you even have to cross rivers, and rivers that flow hard, hard. Just now, we crossed one or two sheep. My horse got wet up to its belly. No, no, no, don't let the current take us. Let's go. Oops. Good, Mati, very good. We got soaked up to our feet. Oops, cannon! Then suddenly they get deep. He's a champion. Pure blood, this guy. Look at him, a chingón.
And here above, the good Mati, I want to tell you a little bit of the history of the Andes Mountains event. Let's see, this has really made international news. A lot of books, documentaries, movies have been made. However, let's make a small recapitulation of the facts. Year 1972. A rugby team from Uruguay is going to Chile. They leave from Montevideo, and in the middle of the flight, they start to have difficulties. The plane, so they have to make an emergency stop here in the city of Mendoza, in Argentina. They are here waiting for the bad weather to pass. The bad weather, and we are all like this. Pilot, we are running out of time. Don't be like that. Let's get out of here. And with all the bad weather, they decide to return to the air. Take off again, and. Oh, wow. Erroneous decision that apparently this was. For just as they cross the Andes, the plane crashes below, and a long way ahead. There they were stranded. And a day went by, and no one came to the rescue. And another day went by. And by the third day, they realized that they were indeed far from being rescued. And there began a mission of simply surviving.
We had to wait seven days to see if they would come to rescue us, which was one of the biggest blows we received, to hear over the radio that the search had been called off and that it was by yourself in that huge mountain massif. And that was one thing, a tremendous blow, because you went out and looked and saw everything snowed in and said, where am I going? How do I get out of all this? How do I get out of this mountain? We were 28 people alive, and there were a lot of difficulties to sleep, for everything. And after that, after about ten or 12 or 13 days, we ran out of food. There was nothing to eat anymore, absolutely nothing.
To understand more graphically and realistically the resources that people had to survive, we prepared this little suitcase with a representation of the things they had to survive. The only food they had were two bottles of liquor, two cans of mussels, some salty cookies, a few nuts, almonds, dried fruits, and a handful of sweets. That's all they had to survive. That's one person's food in a day, and you get a little bit hungry. It's really very little resource. And this was for twenty-some people. By the time they realized what had happened and were able to get off the aircraft, 16 people had already died. And as a very curious, very interesting fact, by the time the whole nightmare was over, there were already 29 dead and 16 survivors. The numbers were completely reversed.
If there comes a time when our comrades come to us one night and tell us, guys, if we continue in this situation, we are all going to die. And the only solution is to feed ourselves with the bodies of our comrades. And what was he telling me? He was telling me that I had to feed on someone who had been my classmate for 12 years, who had been my teammate, who had been training with him the week before. It was a tremendous thing. It was a life and death decision. You had to choose whether to go on living or stop eating and die.
After almost two months, part of the crew took courage and said, "We're not going to achieve anything standing here, they're never going to find us." So, originally, three of the young men decided to undertake an exploration mission to see what they could find. And in the end, I was left as an expeditionary, and I joined Roberto and Nando's team. And from there, the group also decides that they have to sacrifice themselves so that the expeditionaries are in better conditions. So they give us the best places to sleep, they give us double rations of food. They knew that they had to sacrifice themselves, and at the same time, the group of expeditionaries were the legs of those who were left on the plane. Until finally, after about ten days of walking, they were finally able to establish communication with a Chilean echo farmer who was around. He gave notice that they survived. They did not know that they were already world news. Some time later, a helicopter comes to rescue the young men, and the rest is history.
Just in a river like this, we can partially recreate how it was the moment when the explorers found human life and eventually got help for the whole group. You see, after days and days of walking and having a horrible time, they finally found a person in the field. In fact, on the Chilean side, crossing a river. The river, of course, was wider than this one, and the current was much stronger, much more plentiful, so the sound was very loud, nothing could be heard, and no matter how much they shouted at him, there could be no communication. Then the Chilean peasant threw a piece of paper with a stone so that they could write. So on the paper, they wrote, "Hey, we are here. Worth burger. There are many more people on a plane. Please rescue us." Then they picked up another stone, threw it back, and the person in the field could read them, could know what was going on, and the farmer proceeded to leave. They trusted him that he was going to bring help, and indeed, a day later, the rescue operations began.
When we go very steeply upwards. In a certain way, you get more balance. Now, what we have to do is to go down this way and cross all this here. It's very long, but beautiful. We have arrived at the base camp where we will spend the next two nights. This camp is about ten, 12 kilometers approximately from the exact point where the plane went down, where the snow society happened. So for now, we are going to rest for a while, light a fire, warm up, and tomorrow, very early, at dawn, we will start our journey. Wow, the night here is beautiful. Seeing it from our perspective, but imagining it from a perspective where you are lost here is intimidating. The stars are seen like in few other places. Honestly, very nice night, very serene, very enjoyable. But I say, imagine it in the context of being lost. Stranded here. Ufff, how scary, how infinite it must feel.
And one night, being all seated inside the fuselage of the plane, ready to sleep. Suddenly, an avalanche comes in, covers us all, and I throw myself from the place where I am, which was higher than the rest, and I start to dig with a brutal desperation, and I manage to dig and pull out one, and then another. The king appears, and you start to pull out people too. And seconds go by, and of those 28 of us who were alive, in a short time, ten of them die, and 19 of us are left inside an igloo. We had lost absolutely all our equipment, and we had to start again with small iron bars, with small plastics, to remove all that snow to be able to get the bodies out and to be able to make that piece of plane habitable again.
Hey, good morning. Good morning to you. Whew. What a cold night we passed. These are the sleeping bags we use. Oh, no! What a cold dog! And that we are even lower than the. Point, and there is no snow. No, no, no, shit! I mean. No, no, no, don't shit! Well, let's take a partial bath with towelettes so we don't break a wing, and let's go. The sun is out.
Before starting the day's ride of more than ten kilometers, a stop by this thawing stream so that the horses can eat very green, very fresh grass, and for us to refill our water. We didn't bring any bay water from the city, bottled water, but since this water is tap water from the creek, it is perfectly safe to drink. The problem with drinking this water is that it doesn't really have a lot of minerals in it because it comes straight from the snowmelt. So, while it does refresh you and gives you a sense that it's quenching your thirst, it's not really hydrating you very much. Well, horses fed, humans slightly hydrated. Hit it.
After about five hours of traversing, very steep hills, cobblestones, grasslands, rivers, even a little snow. For real. This is a heavy, intense ride, in which if your horse makes a false step, you can fall into the ravine, and you'll be in the gully. You can fall into the ravine, and you're called. We have finally arrived at the exact spot where the tragedy happened. Right next to me, we can see a collective grave where the remains of 28 of the 29 people who lost their lives rest. And you may wonder why the grave is placed here and not right at the exact spot where we can see ice and snow down there. This is because if the mass grave had been placed back there, no doubt the constant snowfalls and thaws would have caused everything to be much lower or many meters under ice, so it was better placed on a hill a little higher, where the remains of human bodies that were found have been buried. It is said that only 13 bodies of the 29 that were next to the plane were recognizable. All the rest were very deteriorated due to the weather conditions, because they had been freezing and thawing for 72 days. And also because, as we have already mentioned, several body parts had to be eaten by their companions in an attempt to survive at the graveside.
We can also see some remains of the plane that have been found over the years. And indeed, decades after the crash, things have continued to be found. Many estimate that even today, 52 years after the event, there are probably still parts of the aircraft buried over there, lost over there. And many will be asking why they didn't leave the body of the plane here. Perhaps as a gesture, as a symbol not to forget what happened. And the answer is that they are basically rules. Because if another plane crash happens here, they don't want the scouts to get confused or a helicopter to come by looking for something. See that, and there are confusions, and see what you find around here. I think this is the most graphic part of all. This is the window of the plane. This is also something very graphic, and that we can imagine very easily. It's basically a tube that the survivors used to build stretchers for those who were seriously injured and couldn't really do anything for the equipment. Likewise, we can see lots and lots of wires that were used to sew clothes with the same fabric as the seats, as well as to make ropes. Many of these items are, in fact, on display in the museum in Montevideo, Uruguay.
At some point, you would say that you lost hope for life. At night, when you were alone? You had a bath of reality that told you that you were not leaving here, this is impossible, this is crazy. You tried to say goodbye to dad, mom, and my brother, to be able to give them a kiss and tell them, "I'm going back to the mountain, and I'm dying." And yet, the next day, you put on a uniform of invincibility, and you went back to fight, and you went back to face, and you went back to keep trying to get out of that place. What you were convinced that if death was going to find you, it was going to find you trying to get out of the place, that you were not going to surrender.
And we can see that both at the tomb and at the memorial, people from all over the world over the decades have come to leave items of value, religious images, team jerseys, flags, positive messages. But in fact, the situation of bringing so many items began to, shall we say, saturate the area so much that they put a plaque right at the beginning of the walk saying, "Please do not bring any more items. We appreciate you coming here, but please do not bring any more things, please do not leave any more." Because, in a certain way, so to speak, it was already getting dirty, it was already very saturated. And although some plaques, rosaries, what do I know, could be very meaningful, we can see some other things that, in fact, I would understand why the relatives of the deceased would not want to be here. On the plaques that they have come to leave, we read very beautiful, very moving phrases, but I think that the one that has touched my heart the most, the one that has touched me the most, is, in fact, one of the simplest that says, "There is no greater love than to give one's life for one's friends." I think it is the strongest of all, and without a doubt, this place is very moving.
From this point, we can also observe the route that the plane followed just as it went down here, and also the escape route that the young explorers followed to try to get out of here. You see, the plane is said to have crashed right up there on top of that ridge and slid like a sled with the snow all the way down to that point there. In fact. That's why. Well, it is said that if the crash had happened in midsummer, when there was no snow, the people would not have had a chance of survival, because since the plane would have hit the ground, it would have exploded, it would have come apart with the rocks. Now, as for the escape route, what the young men did was that they climbed that mountain that we are looking at very steeply, a traverse that professional climbers with years of experience and equipment and walking sticks could barely make. They did it in sneakers, wearing jeans and a jacket or two, and that's why it took them three days to get up there.
Now, we're going to take a little walk over there because we're seeing that there's an airplane part down there. It looks like a wing part or something. Wait, that's not the only part. You see, here we find a piece of a plane. I really don't know what it is. It seems to be an engine, maybe part of the electrical workings, or what do I know. And in fact, further on, we are seeing what looks like a wheel. Yes, indeed. It's two tires with part of the plane. Wow, how massive they are, and what a hike we had to do to get here. But it does show that they are scattered all over the place. And what has not yet been found, surely there is much, much more.
I formally introduce Pablo here, my guide, teacher, and Pablo. I would like you to tell us why people make this journey to come here. Because. I am discovering it. It's really not an easy task at all. In general, this story. I think it has mobilized a lot of people. Now, with the snow society, more because the young people have arrived, the not-so-young people like me are starting to come because we have some personal history. In my case, my mother died in a plane crash, because I like the mountain, because my father has flown, and I discover that this happens to many people, it mobilizes them, it has helped them in their lives, it has taken them out of depression, they have been motivated to improve. All this makes them say, "I want to be in that place to see what it was really like to live the experience." And in fact, being in that place, one becomes much more aware of what they lived, and some are grateful because this story also led them to overcome some difficulty in their lives, and they come here to give thanks. I think that to the extent that each one identifies with different things, it gives much more value to the story, because it is a story of struggle, it is a story of not giving up, it is a story of failures, it is a story where we failed many times. It is not a story of great successes.
A few steps ahead, we find other pieces of metal, other cables, another one. What could this be? Like an electrical installation. All too much. And surely, if we walk further down there, if we turn around for a few hours, we'll keep finding more and more parts. Just think about it. How many micro parts does an airplane have? A lot. But wow, seeing all of this up close, so graphic, has really touched my heart. I'm sorry for all this, but thank you for leaving such a strong reflection to humanity. Thank you for somehow still touching us with your story decades later. I am very sorry, from the bottom of my heart.
What is the most valuable lesson that remains with you? What is the most valuable thing you learned? As I was saying, the strength of the human being, the will, which is that little engine we have inside, which is what drives us to do a lot of things, to move when you can't move, when you can't do things, when you feel you are not capable, and yet you have that ability inside you. That is the will, to take that step when you cannot. The great mountains are climbed step by step, doing small things every day, and that is the capacity of the human being to face things, to face those challenges. And sometimes it doesn't matter if we overcome it or get to the top. The important thing is that we gave everything on the way to try to get to that place.
So there you have it, a little bit of what the Andes crash site looks like. More than five decades later. I say goodbye to this adventure looking towards the mountain that the survivors and the deceased saw every morning, every dawn, for more than two months full of agony, uncertainty, and also a lot of hope. Undoubtedly, this has been an adventure with a bit of everything, from which I leave pleasantly moved. I would like to thank once again the survivors who allowed us to interview them for this report. I would also like to thank all the people who took care of the logistics to make this adventure happen. Thank you very much for joining me in one more adventure, and I will see you, as always, as you know, in a few days with a new video. Bye.