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On October 13, 1972, a Fairchild FH-227D twin turboprop airplane departed from Montevideo carrying an Uruguayan rugby team to play a friendly game in Chile. Along with the team were some relatives and friends. The plane crashed in the Andes near the border between Chile and Argentina. After ten days of struggle for survival with minimal rations, the numerous survivors decided to eat the bodies of the deceased passengers in order to survive.




After several weeks on the mountain, eight of the remaining survivors were killed in an avalanche. In the weeks that followed, several others died of starvation and complications from wounds sustained in the crash.




On the 62nd day of their ordeal, Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa attempted to climb out of the crash site to seek help. After a 10-day, nearly 50-mile trek through the rugged, treacherous Andes, they encountered a local farmer with a horse, who fed them and helped take them to a telephone. A military helicopter of Chile arrived and saved the remaining 14 survivors on December 22, seventy-two days after their plane had crashed due to the pilot's navigational error.




"You see where the sun's gonna set? That way's West, and to the West are the green mountains of Chile. Maybe we'll die, but if we die, we'll die walking."


-Ethan Hawke as Nando Parrado in the 1993 movie Alive

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