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Twenty-seven survivors now remained of the original 45 aboard. For drinking water, we melted snow; to keep ourselves as warm as possible, we slept side by side at night, breathing each other's breath.One morning around this time, after Marcelo, the captain of our rugby team, decisively led us to pool the little food we had -- a few chocolate bars, some nuts and crackers, dried fruit, small jars of jam and a few bottles of liquor -- I found myself standing outside the fuselage. I was looking down at the single chocolate-covered peanut in my palm.
The shattered fragments of my skull had been knitting themselves together; somehow, I was healing. Yet nothing was ordinary. The mountains were forcing me to change; my mind was growing colder and simpler. Our supplies had been exhausted. This peanut was the last bit of food I would be given, and I was determined to make it last. That day, I slowly sucked the chocolate off the peanut and then saved it in the pocket of my slacks.
The next day I separated the peanut halves, slipping one half back into my pocket and placing the other half in my mouth. I sucked gently on the peanut for hours, allowing myself only a nibble now and then. I did the same the day after that. When I'd finally nibbled the peanut down to nothing, there was no food left to eat at all.
At 12,000 feet or higher, the body's caloric needs are astronomical. A climber scaling any of the mountains around the crash site would have required as many as 10,000 calories a day to maintain his current body weight. We weren't climbing, but still, our caloric requirements were much higher than usual. Even before our rations had run out, we'd never consumed more than a few hundred calories a day. Now, our intake was down to zero. Where once we'd been sturdy and vigorous young men, many of us in peak physical shape, I saw my friends growing thin and drawn.
In desperation, we tried eating strips of leather torn from our luggage. We ripped open seat cushions hoping for straw, but found only upholstery foam.
I kept coming to the same conclusion: Until we were rescued, there was nothing here but aluminum, plastic, ice and rock. Sometimes I would rise and shout in frustration, "There's nothing in this f - - - - - - plane to eat!"
But of course there was food on the mountain. It was as near as the bodies of the dead lying outside the fuselage under a thin layer of frost. It puzzles me that despite my compulsive drive to find anything edible, I ignored for so long the obvious presence of the only edible objects within a hundred miles. Some lines, I suppose, the mind is slow to cross.
It was late afternoon when my gaze fell on the leg wound of a boy near me. I could not stop looking at it. Then I met the gaze of some others who had also been staring. In shame, we read each other's thoughts and glanced away. But something had happened. I'd recognized human flesh as food.
I knew those bodies represented our only hope of survival, but I was so horrified that I kept my feelings quiet. Finally I couldn't stay silent any longer. One night in the darkness, I confided in Carlitos, who was lying beside me in the dark. "Are you awake?" I whispered to him.
"Yes," he muttered. "Who can sleep in this freezer?"
"Are you hungry?"
Carlitos cursed. "What do you think? I haven't eaten in days."
"We're going to starve here," I said. "I don't think the rescuers will find us in time. But I will not die here. I will make it home."
"Nando, you are too weak."
"I'm weak because I haven't eaten."
"But what can you do? There's no food here."
"There is food," I answered. "You know what I mean."
Carlitos shifted in the darkness, but said nothing.
"I will cut meat from the pilot," I whispered. "He's the one who put us here; maybe he will help us get out."
Carlitos cursed again.
"Our friends don't need their bodies anymore," I said.
To read more of this dramatic account, pick up a copy of the June 2006 issue of Reader's Digest on newsstands now.
From Reader's Digest - June 2006
"MIRACLE IN THE ANDES: 72 DAYS ON THE MOUNTAIN AND MY LONG TREK HOME," BY NANDO PARRADO WITH VINCE RAUSE, COPYRIGHT © 2006 BY NANDO PARRADO, PUBLISHED AT $25 BY CROWN PUBLISHERS, A DIVISION OF RANDOM HOUSE, INC., 1745 BROADWAY, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10019.
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