A daring journey

Temperatures which plummeted to 40 below at night. Threatening avalanches capable of uprooting anything in its path. Hardly any food or water. The constant menace of death to family, friends and colleagues, all the while feeling powerless to do something on their behalf. And the cruelest cut of all, hearing over the radio that all rescue attempts from this frigid sentence had been abandoned. Death seemed a macabre certainty that would be delivered by the icy temperatures and shortage of food supplies.

This was the reality faced by a group of Uruguayan students at more than 4000 meteres during 72 days when their Chile-bound plane crashed into the Andes Mountains. For those of you familiar with the story, naturally I am speaking of “Alive”, the moving novel and equally moving feature film. It is one of those stories of superhuman sacrifice and courage that leave you spellbound. A story which I had the privilege of listening to directly from one of the survivors, Nando Parrando. Without a doubt, it is the lecture which has had the greatest impact on me not only because of the events therein but also due to its inspirational message.

Nando Parrado was, along with Roberto Canessa, a survivor of the plane crash, who following two months of being trapped in the Andes, decided to challenge the surrounding peaks in search of liberating themselves and their companions from this overwhelming tragedy. It was a challenging journey they decided to undertake only because they had no choice; the alternative was sure death. It was an odyssey that would require 12 arduous days of non-stop trekking through ice and snow, uphill over steep summits.

What most impressed be about the encounter with Nando Parrado was a photograph he showed us taken the first day he scaled the nearest summit. Picture it: two months of having barely eaten at all, your energy-meter is beyond empty and when you finally muster the courage to do the impossible, i.e. leave this ivory tundra, all that lies before you as far as the eye can see is an endless topographical map of snow-capped peaks with no signs of civilization in sight. A similar photo follows:

Total desolation, is it not? For sure, but life is about having courage and believing. A hero can be the person who remains standing or the person who falls, but never one who abandons the fight. That’s the moral of this tale. One which enabled Nando Parrado to escape from a situation much more complicated that any of us has ever known.