Stranded

On October 12th, 1972, a Fairchild F 227 airplane from the Uruguayan Air Force took off from Montevideo in the direction of Santiago de Chile carrying a team of amateur rugby players, the Old Christians, from Carrasco, a smart suburb of the Uruguayan capital, Montevideo, to play a friendly match in Santiago. The bad weather forced them to make a stop-over in Mendoza, Argentina. The next day, shortly after resuming its journey, the plane lost contact with the control tower.

For 10 days the search and rescue teams sent out by Argentina, Chile and Uruguay could find no trace of the plane and its passengers. Particularly heavy snow falls had all but buried the white-roofed wreck of the plane, making it almost invisible from the air. Nobody believed that there was any hope of finding any of the 45 crash victims.

Ten weeks later, a shepherd herding his flock in a high Andean valley saw the outline of two men in the distance, waving their arms to attract his attention.

After the rescue, at a noisy press conference, the survivors admitted that they had been obliged to eat "the bodies of our friends" in order to survive. The world's media, gathered to hear their story, was stunned.

How did they survive the appalling conditions at 4.000 metres? How did they organize their daily lives during the ordeal? How did two of them manage to get out of there on foot to fetch a rescue party? This is a story that transcends the personal, a philosophical tale about the importance of friendship and solidarity in extreme situations.