BACK TO THE MOUNTAIN
Ater many years since the tragic event happened, some of the "Andes Miracle" survivors go back to the place where it all happened and face the cold and mighty Andes.
by: Daniela Tangarife
The 16 survivors will never forget the accident and they still commemorate their 72 days on the mountain and their 29 mates who didn't survive the accident. They've gone back several times to the place where the fuselage of the plane was.
The latest visit they did was 40 years after the plane crashed (October, 2012). During this memorial, the sixteen survivors played rugby and were accompanied by their families and friends. They built a field in a small mountain near Mendoza which had about 3,800 meters of altitude. After the game was finished, they made an expedition back to the cross in the Santa Elena Mountain and made a bonfire in honor of the last night they passed there.
One of the survivors, Fernando "Nando" Parrado explains how the place where "The Andes Miracle" happened is very isolated and how difficult it is to get up there (you have to drive three hours into the mountains, then go horsbeack and after that climb 12,000 feet in two days). He also mentions how determined his family was to go to the place where he spend 72 days of his life before his heroic "escape" with Roberto Canessa.
4 Magazine / April, 2013