someone we might die. We couldn´t give up the others in the plane believed in us,
they trusted us. Finally that night we saw three men on horseback we asked for
help but they said “tomorrow”, we weren´t sad, that gave us hope, “we were
saved”.
The next day, the men we saw the night before on horseback came and threw a
rock with a paper asking us what we wanted. They threw also a pen and I
answered: “I come from the plane that fell in the mountains. I am Uruguayan. We
have been walking f ten days. I have a friend 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 fetch us?
Please. We can´t even walk. Where are we? SOS”.
I threw the rock back and when the man read what the note said, he threw a piece
of bread which I took to Canessa. When I gave it to him he said: “we´re saved” and
I answered: “yes, we´re saved”. A man on horseback came for us, when we arrived
to the other side of the lake we ate and we took a nap. When we woke up we
realized we were free, it was incredible to think those seventy days before our
plane, the Fairchild had crashed in
the mountains, and now we were
free.
On the morrowthe helicopters
arrived, we were going for the
remaining
fourteen.
The
helicopters toke off, I was in one of
them, I was guiding. When we
reached the big mountain and we
started going up, the helicopter
started shaking a lot, I was scared,
that´s how it all started with the Fairchild. Finally we landed, and there it was, all
that was left of the Fairchild. It was impossible to land so the boys jumped into the
helicopter and we returne d to Los Maitenes. Because of the weather the ones that
remained in the plane were going to be rescuedthe next day. We arrived to where
somefamilies were waiting and Carlitos hugged his dad, Paéz Vilaró. I hugged him
to; there are no words to describehow I felt.
They took us to the hospital I refused to use a wheelchair. When I arrived into the
private rooms that were reserved for us the security guard was astonished by my
appearance, he couldn´t believe I was a survivor. I took a bath and I stayed in the
water for about an hour and a half. At first they didn´t give us solid food, but after
we ask for it several times, they did.