September 8, 2025 • 48 mins
Most people think a plane crash is the worst thing that can happen on a flight, but what if you survived the crash only to find yourself isolated from the rest of the world, in the snow above the tree line, with only a few tins of mussels and chocolate for food. Well that's the awful situation that the survivors of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 found themselves in. Join Aaron as he takes us through another icky tale, with John and Sean suitably horrified at the things they hear. Find the video version on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@CheekyTalesPod
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
A man and his twofriends are riding on horseback
through the mountainousterrain of Chile.
Someone get me coconuts!
It's getting late,and the horses are tired
from a day of riding.Alongside a river,
it's hard enough to hear yourself think,
let alone hold a conversationwith those around him.
Across the river,he spots two men who look like
(00:22):
they're setting up campfor the night
yelling out to him,but he can't hear a word.
He shouts back, “Tomorrow!”,
not really intendingto do anything about it,
but overnight,as he rests in bed,
he can't help but think,why are they calling out to me?
The next day,he rides back alone to the spot
and finds the two menin the light of the morning,
looking rake thin, like they'vewalked a thousand miles.
(00:45):
He throws anote and pencil stuck to a rock
across the river, and waitsfor the reply from the men.
The note comes backwith an unbelievable story.
“We were in a plane crash
and there are 14people left in the plane.
Can you help us?”
These men are survivorsfrom a crash
that will go down in history
(01:05):
as one of the most infamousincidents of all time.
This week on “IckyTales”, we're covering the story
of Uruguayan Air ForceFlight 571.
Not icky!
(01:32):
Sorry when you said.
It's been a nice day.
It has a heater on it.
When you
when you said the part whereyou shouted across the river,
you said that, right?
My first thought was likeyou shouted.
What's your name?
Oh, not icky tales.
We haven't done any talesfor a while.
Back with another Icky tales.
(01:54):
I'm excited. Yeah.
And this is one of the icky.
It stands. Oh, no.
It sounds like somethingmight actually happen.
Not like one of theselast sticky tiles
where nothing happened.
Hey. Hey.
You just said that no oneat each other or got murdered.
Oh, sounds like I'm going to behappy this time.
Oh, boy. Are you okay?
I don't like that.
That's the benchmark.
(02:16):
Now, this is now the benchmarkof John enjoying the story.
To some.
Someone has to get eaten.Or this.
Some get eaten.
Also, I think I'm 100%for eating tales.
At least. At least a leg.
Which reminds me,I seen an article today.
Some surgeon was finedfor amputating his own legs.
Yeah. Super weird. It'sso. Weird.
Yeah, odd that you can be finedfor doing that to yourself.
(02:40):
But anyway. Anyway.
Anyway, happy Father's Day.We're recording on Father's Day.
So it. Is. Sean.
Happy Father's Day,not you, aren't you, Chuck?
Happy Father's Day to you too.
I suck. Yeah. Go on,call yourself a cat.
Dad, say it out.
I will not say what happens.
You know, I haven't three kids.
Three catslike having one job. You know?
No. Happy Father'sDay to everyone out there.
(03:03):
You're doing a good job.
Well, not.
All of them.
It's been, like, three minutes.
So do you want to goand we'll just leave?
I want to tell a storyby himself.
Yeah. Didn't even have kids.
No, don't tell Mr.
UN. Don'truin a nice sentiment, please.
Who said I'm. Sorry?
(03:25):
Sorry?Who said he was a bad father?
Well, he just might have beena shitty person
who said he was a that.
Okay.
John Savage, going on recordas an Ivan Milat sympathizer.
Didn't have that on the cardsfor this week.
And going to be a 2025. Bingo.
It's a. Tough edit.
Well, for your mouth like that.
(03:46):
Geez, John,just drop that accent.
Oh, man. Alive.
I think it's timewe get into the story.
Are you sureyou're the one that brought him
up in the first place? Well,you said all dads are good.
I hadn'teven thought about him for.
Okay.
I also didn't say that either.
You can go backand check the tapes.
People check the tapes?
They should sound like RichardNixon didn't
(04:08):
know pipes on tires.
Actually, don't check them out.
Wait a minute.Why don't I take all the time?
Oh, no.
Oh, just a little contactinformation
is on the front of the carI installed at the door.
Oh, you didn't saythere was going to be tapes?
Yes, I did, sir.
You asked for itto be installed.
Yeah.
(04:30):
Go back and listento the Watergate episode.
It's a. Great effort.
Yeah, lots of that.
All right, well,the first section is titled.
The game played in Heavensends a Flight to hell. Yep.
Wrap us up, boy.
A little bonus and nibbleaway on us with your story.
That's good.
So this story starts
just like manya childhood story in school.
(04:53):
Did you say it was Uruguay?
Uruguayan Air Force flight five.
So is this a military plane?
No. Well,it is a military plane.
Okay, I will get to. Why?
It's an air force. Okay,
so the flight was a specialcharter for the Old Christians
Rugby Union Club,
a school with a rich rugbybackground in Uruguay
who was sending their old boysteam to play against another
(05:14):
old boys team in Santiago,Chile.
Rugby union.You love this story?
Yeah.
As soon as you said
the game played in heaven,I was like, that's.
That's what they refer to.Rugby union.
Oh, really? Yeah. It'ssomething.
Rugby is not mentionedafter the first paragraph.
But for context,if you're Australian
and you're foreign,you will have seen occasionally.
You can actuallyyou could get personalized
(05:35):
plates in Queenslandthat has that like rugby
union plates not a team sportspecific game played.
No actually.
Speaking of sports,
my god the Gabba next weekendis going to be rocking.
When the Lions.
Take on the sharks.
Yeah. When the Lions have
their last chanceat staying in the finals.
Well the Lions and the Sunsapplying for a grand final spot.
(05:57):
That's going to be.
Our that first semifinal spotthe Lions. Lost.
Well then the news got it wrong.
And then I was watching itthe tonight before.
Yes the news got it wrong. Yeah.
They said they were playing hardfor grand finals.
Literally never heard of that.
For a chanceat the grand final. Maybe.
And that technically true? Yes.
Anyway, it's going to be.Absolutely.
You know,
I would not want to be drivingpast the Gabba next weekend.
(06:20):
Don't catch nobody on that.
Sorry.
So someone. Said sport. It.
It was expensive to flyfrom Uruguay to Chile.
And with the Air Forceoffering charter flights.
What? What? Sorry.
The, clip of Homer justpopped in my head.
Oh, yeah.
(06:41):
If, you know, you know, grow up.
You know, I.
So the cheapest option wasto charter an Air Force flight.
Yep. So the rugby club'spresident
would book the flight
with the ideathat any extra seats
could be offered to familyand friends.
Lovely.
In the end,there were 40 passengers
and five crew on the flight,
including pilot ColonelJulio Cesar.
All right, as for fair, it is
(07:03):
Fernandez. Nope.
30 members of the team
and ten friendsand family of the team members.
The plane chartered was a FokkerF 27 friendship,
which is just a great namefor a plane.
I think the friendshippart of the park.
Both. Just a brilliant name.
Can confirm in militaryaircraft recognition,
it is referred to as the FokkerFriendship.
(07:25):
Yeah. No. Yeah.They don't skip over that.
They're like,not screw them numbers.
I don't thinkit's the friendship
because it's got a nice nose.
It's a happy looking plane.
I don't think,folk are still around.
No, no, I don't thinkthe company story anymore.
They probably got boughtby one of the.
Others that were quite prominentin World War two.
They were also quiteprominent for, like, prop
middle sized planes.
(07:47):
Which is not anindustry that really exists now.
Is it German? Okay.
All right. You look that up.
So this plane was a twinengine turboprop
with a classic wing overfuselage design. Yeah.
The plane had a, let's say,less than stellar safety record.
With Wikipedia listing 33incidents for this plane alone.
(08:07):
It had a fantasticnickname as well.
The lid slid thanks to itsweight and relatively weak.
Engines, but the great.
That is not a nicknameof a plane.
You, you want to be getting on?
No. Perfect nickname for what.
Happens to fly.
There was a stat that I readthat was something like of the
of the 80 of themthat were built,
33 crashed or somethinglike it was
(08:29):
it was more than a third of theone of them ever built crashed.
Picture this.
Picture yourself looking at.
You and I.We're going on a trip.
We're getting onto a plane.
We get our tickets,we rock up to the.
Are we having an airport?Be sure.
Are we getting a bite to eat.
We're sitting therehaving a bite to eat.
Having an airport be a
we got two tickets.
(08:49):
Says what plane room.
And I'll tell the young guy
you know the planewe're about to get on
called. The lid slid.
Its nickname is BlazingBall of Fire.
Yeah.
Its nickname is Doesn't Fly.
Good credit.
You think that means a third
of all these types of planescrashed?
Yeah. I'm not getting on that.
And then.And then I. Say to you.
Oh, the the Boeing 7370000.
(09:12):
Get them.
Get dunked Boeing.
Oh they take that.
Mister Boeing is sittingsomewhere at home at the moment.
Oh. Oh I think he's back.
When they hit the groundthey don't go Boeing.
Actuallyactually they probably do.
Sorry to anyone that lost,family members on those planes.
How insensitive ofyou. Not my hate, not those.
(09:36):
You going to have the best time
editing that out?
Not a chance.
Oh. Come on. So, damn.
Sean's heavy on the edits. Yeah,he doesn't want me to say.
Just cut.
All the fun and he.
Really want to gag me so much.
I guess you could do thatwhen I leave.
You can't. Say gag.
There are so many wordsthat you just shouldn't
(09:57):
say on podcasts or YouTube,and gag is one of them.
Lubricate is another one.
Okay,then why are you saying it on.
The show of intentionallysaying it?
Panties is another.
100 that they only got Charles.
And the line van. The line is
Nick is asking Nick, is thiswhat King is worth?
(10:18):
Yeah, baby. What is that?
Is the nickthat is your top command.
Who said that? Yeah.
If you want to knowwhat I'm talking about,
go back and listento the Lady Die episode.
Princess Diane.
Of Data dump that episode.
So this flightinitially took off on Thursday,
the 12th of October, 1972.
(10:39):
On the lead sled.
Yes, it did,
but as it got
closer to the Andesmountain range,
the weather took a turnfor the worse,
and it was forced
to land in Mendozato stay there for the night.
It was a bad joke.
The Andes mountain range is badand was bad.
But Buzz and Woody saidnothing. No.
I miss you.
(10:59):
Let's golf like a battleof a battleship jungle.
I mean.
On the morning of Fridaythe 13th to spooky. Oh.
The weatherstill hadn't improved,
but by the afternoon,it was looking good.
Was it foggy?
It was foggy.
It was stormy. It was not good.
But in the.
In theafternoon, it was looking good.
So the flight took off againto start the final
(11:20):
90 minuteleg to Santiago at 2:18 p.m.,
while Mendoza was almostdirectly east of Santiago.
I did mention that there weresome mountains in the way.
The big boys.
The big boys of South America,the Andes.
If the plane were to flydirectly west,
it would need to go over the topof the Mount Aconcagua.
That's not how you say it,but good luck
(11:42):
working that out yourself.
A 77,000 meter behemoththat wouldn't
leave much room in the plane'sservice ceiling.
Rather than risk that,
the regular rat
would fly a U-shaped coursecutting south from Mendoza,
west abovesome shorter mountains,
and then north againto Santiago.
As you ready,Sean? It's a cone. Oh, it's
(12:03):
Aconcagua.
I've got it.
Are you ready to say it? Go!
What?
I'm here
for a konichiwa.
That's a bit weird, because.
I want to put a bit of pressureon. Amazing.
It is not that easy to say no.
And the phoneticspelling of it away on there.
By 321, the pilot for radiushad handed over flight
(12:25):
controls to copilot LieutenantColonel Dante Hector Laguna.
You have the controls? Yeah.
So the copilot could gainsome experience.
The copilot would sayI have the controls. Yes.
Except this timehe said a lot worse. Oh.
While the weather was clearenough for flight, it wasn't
clear enough for visual flightconditions. VFR.
(12:46):
So they were using instrumentsto keep track of their location
for orders.
Would make a call to the cabin
that they were
about into some turbulence,and then radioed into
air traffic control.
They were a minuteaway from the next check in.
Actually, they were60 to 69, nine kilometers away.
Have you made their final turn?
Made their turn to the westand to the north.
Too early.
(13:07):
At this point,
they believe they had
flown away from the Andes,but they were still right on top
in cabin.
There wasn't any cluethat anything was wrong.
The passengers were stilltaking photos.
Some of which are incrediblyhaunting today.
Knowing what was to come.
That photo,
the last photo from insidethe plane will be in the,
photos that we put up on social.
(13:27):
Supplemental content.
That's it.
As the aircraftstarted its descent,
they hit the promised turbulenceas they flew on.
As one of the survivorsrecalled someone saying,
we seem to close to the ground.
And they were right.
Suddenly, the pilots realized
their mistakeas a mountain ridge
came out of the cloudsin front of them.
They would put the planeto full power
and pull back on the stick.
(13:48):
So the plane wasalmost vertical.
Unfortunately, as I said before,the engines on the Fokker
weren't up to the taskand the plane started to stall
as the grand coalition collisionalarms started to blare.
There was no doubt in the cabinwhat was about to come next.
What they were headingtowards was a glacier.
And while the nose of the planemade it over the ridge,
the tail section didn't.
(14:08):
Clipping the ridge
at 3:34 p.m., at an altitudeabove sea level of 4200m.
That's pretty unlucky to.
Flip it.
Yeah.
The entire tailsection was torn off,
including two rows of seats,which contained three
passengers. The navigatorand a flight attendant.
Next, the rightwing smashed into the ground,
(14:30):
followed by the leftwing tearing both off.
It would crest another ridge,
now, throwing the peoplefrom the plane as it went,
and started a 725 metersled ride down the mountain.
That's why I said the sled.
When the fuselage
finally crashed into the
into a snowbank,
it would kill the pilotimmediately
crush the copilot and force
(14:50):
all the seats in the cabinforward into the forward
bulkhead, injuring and killingmany left inside.
The plane had come to rest 80kmaway from its planned route,
at an elevation of 3675m,
which is about acan about a K higher than the
highest mountain in Australia.
So if you've ever done,
casa usko imagine a half of itagain on top.
(15:13):
That's where they werein this crashed out plane.
Besidesthe plane had a bad record.
Seems to be kind
of like pilot errorat this point for this plane.
Yeah, this one was.
Wasn't like a mechanical. Yeah.
They just don'tknow where they were.
Yeah.
Which, you know,most accidents are that.
Which is, Yeah.
Very similar to the F-16 crash.
(15:35):
I don't know if you're seeing
the footage of the F-16that was practicing for, Asia.
Yes, I did say that.
It was.
He started his maneuver.
About 600ft lowerthan what he should have,
because the airfield was 600ft.Above the airfield.
I did hear thathe was using the radio.
He wasn't using the radioaltimeters using that.
He was using the,the air altimeter.
(15:57):
So there's two altimeters.
One that, does air pressure,which takes it from sea level,
and one that does radar,which bounces off the ground
to give youhow high off the ground you are.
And he used the wrong oneand yeah unfortunately crashed.
So injuries on board were variedbut gruesome.
Those that died mostly died ofinjuries from the crash itself.
(16:17):
But one notable differencewas Carlos Violeta who survived
being ejected from the wreckageas it slid down the mountain.
But as he made his way downtowards the fuselage,
fell into deep snowand asphyxiated.
Okay,
although you got to saysomething
like he fell into a bearsden or something.
No, but like,imagine you survive. Yeah, yeah.
A plane back, and then you justfall in snow and die.
Yeah.
(16:38):
Which also made me think ofwhen we went on that hike
through the snow. And we justsuddenly went into, like.
What? Really soft snow.
Not deep snow.
And like, if that had just.
Kept going. By steep.
What what what.
Yeah.
I quitedidn't quite get to the waist.
Didn't get to the way.
Why usethat is the reference point.
Much like the mountain rangethere in it hit.
(17:00):
And these nuts.
Boom.
You feel free to cut that.
Oh, that's that's real content.
That's high quality comedy.When you tap on
Andes in Wikipedia,it shows you how to say it.
And it's a n hyphen d.
E d and my and these.
All right.
It's a it's ait's a it's a it's nuts.
(17:21):
All right. Back to the group.
Sorry that people just died,Sean. And you're making nachos.
Oh, here we go.
Makes the bowing to. Yeah.
That was me.
I was.
I'll take credit for that.
We got to get demonetized.
Oh, no. Oh, right.
You're making money off.
Yeah. Are you guys on.
Those who hadn't died out?
A variety of broken legs,ribs, arms and skull fractures.
(17:44):
I'm sponsored by three mobile.
You guys a skull fracture?
Sean's skull fracture. Come on.
You know it doesn't give youa skull fracture.
Great video. Gary.
Moving into today's
sponsorship video, hereI am talking about
the sponsorshipin a slightly different shirt.
Maybe three mobile one, becausethey found the old bricks on.
Exactly. Get dunked.
One passenger was even piercedby a piece of metal.
(18:07):
And when it was removed,it pulled out
some of his intestines. Oh.
Oh one notableinjury was that of Nando Prado,
who suffered a skull fractureand was left unconscious.
He was left outsidewith the rest of the dead,
with the passengersthinking he was soon to die.
Three dayslater, though, he came to
with the cold of the snow,
(18:28):
having to manage to keepthe swelling in his brain
in check longenough for him to recover. Andy?
Yeah.
Andy in the Andes.
Asidefrom that piece of good news,
there wasn't much else.
Of the 45 people on board.
Only 33 people survived
to see the first sunriseafter the crash.
That's not too bad.
Not powerfulfor a plane crash. Yeah,
(18:50):
but the survivors were now aloneon the mountain,
waiting to seeif anyone would come to help.
In the meantime, they would tryand assess their situation.
They had no warm clothes.
Many were injured,
and they didn't seemto have much in the way of food.
After gathering all the suppliesleft on the plane,
they had only eight chocolatebars, three small jars of jam,
a tin of mussels,a tin of almonds, a few dates,
(19:13):
some candy dried plumsand several bottles of wine.
The in-flight serviceon this point seems seems awful.
It is a bit weird.
Here's your jam and mussels.
I suppose it is a military planethey've chartered.
It's like a commercial planeto expect.
Whereas might have also
just been foodthat they brought with them.
Yeah. Where'swhere's the beer and whiskey?
(19:34):
Well, there was wine.
Okay.
And they laterfound a bottle of white rum.
That the pilot's personal stash.
No, we'll get to it.
Okay.
At the search falters and thefight for survival continues.
It would take just an hour
for the authoritiesto raise the alarm.
With four aircraftstarting to search
for the plane'slast known position.
(19:55):
I mean.
That's still a long timefor a plane crash.
I mean. Kind of.
Yeah. But remember,there's no radar.
What they didn't have right upon the nav radar at the airport.
Okay.
So they didn't really knowwhere the plane was.
And there's like a certainamount of time
that you just kind ofexpect them to not be.
So when, when one,when the plane leaves one
air traffic controltower, there's probably,
(20:17):
empty space until it's meantto check in at the next one.
Yeah.
Where it's going,if especially if it's
coming over a mountain range.
I'm going to assume this.
Nothing. Yeah.
Yeah, I can make sense.
There was only one problem.
The plane wasn'tat its last known location.
The search was happeningin Chile
when the plane hadn'teven made it out of Argentina.
(20:38):
Obviously, they didn't find it.
And the next day, 11 aircrafttook part in the search.
This timeexpanding the search area
and in fact,covering the site of the crash.
Survivors reportedhearing the aircraft overhead
and attempted to write S.O.S.
in lipstickon the top of the fuselage
and laying out their bagsin a large cross.
Unfortunately,despite having planes overhead
(20:58):
three times,they were never spotted
in the white plainon white snow. Okay.
And like when you see photosof it later, you kind of get it.
Yeah.
There are photosof the of them being found.
And you look at it and go.
Ooh. Yeah.
I kind of get how they miss thatwhen they're in a plane. Yep.
While this was going on,
the survivorswere doing their best
(21:18):
to try and give themselvesevery chance of survival.
They had pulled all of thebroken seats and wreckage
from inside the fuselageto make a makeshift shelter
and use the luggage seatsand snow
to block the openend at the tail.
The seat covers were usedas makeshift coats,
and the seat cushions were usedas snowshoes.
One of the passengersmade a solar powered water
(21:39):
collector to melt snowfrom broken sheet metal.
It's some ingenuity happening,though.
It's not. Yeah.
Someone made sunglassesout of green plastic visors
from the cockpitand a bra to, and bra fabric.
Fabric to, to combatthe snow blindness.
Okay, that makes sense. Then.
Yeah.
Despite their resourcefulness,though,
they were still way out
(21:59):
of their depth with no survivaltraining or alpine experience,
no medical supplies,and with most of them injured
in some way,
morale was further dentedby another
five deathsin the next 24 hours.
Oh, and most of these peopleobviously.
Would they all know each other?Yeah.
The football team? Yeah.
It's not a group of strangerson a plane together. It's
(22:20):
like I said all night.
Well, Nando Parado,the one that had the skull
fracture, got left in the snow.
He had his mother and sisteron the plane.
Okay.
And his sister diedafter he woke up.
Spoiler.
During their searchfor supplies,
they also found an Amradio wedged between two seats.
(22:41):
After improvising a long antennaon the 11th day,
they would switch on the antennawith the hope of hearing
some good newsabout their search for them.
So the meaning of this ninefor 11 dies now? Yeah.
Oh, already? Yeah.
They would be devastatedto learn that nobody was coming.
Those muscles aren't lastingthat much.
No, no, they.
There was a story of one guy
eating a single chocolate coatedalmond over three days.
(23:04):
Okay. Yeah. It's like.
Back to the search.
They'd been at it for eight days
with no trace of the downflight.
They had only flownover the site on the first day.
So they had clearly decidedto focus elsewhere
as weather conditions worsened
and the search hitits eighth day.
The search was called offby the authorities,
with the planto search again for the bodies
(23:25):
when the snow meltedin December.
Okay.
This would be broadcast,
out through the mediaover the next few days,
devastating the family of thosestill unaccounted for,
as well as those at the crash.
It's badwhen they're just already.
It's a recovery search,not a rescue search.
Yeah.
And they just go, oh,we can't do it for three months.
Like,
(23:45):
oh, hearing this many survivorswould break down in tears.
And then, yeah,the hearing it on the radio to.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah. 11 days in two.
So they've already been there11 days
and they finally hear thisand they're hearing.
Yeah. From the bodies.
That's got to suck.
(24:05):
As the group startedto be overcome with despair.
One of the survivors,Gustavo Nikolic.
Nikolic would look at ita different way.
He would say,that's some good news.
They've called off the search.
That means that we're goingto get out of here on our own.
Maybejust a little bit of courage,
but a whole lot of delusion.
But it turned out in the end,you'd be right.
(24:27):
Kind of.
Because instead ofjust sitting around
waiting for someone, it's like,okay, now,
because you'd havethat indecision, would
you'd be like, do we go?What do we do?
We take off,or do we just stay in place?
So right now they know they havea definitive decision made.
We're going to.
They do say that you are safer
staying where you areif there's a search for you.
That's correct.
If there's a search for.
(24:47):
To an extent. Yeah.
And if there's no search for youin this circumstance.
Yeah.
Got to do something.
(25:08):
Okay, so what?
We just cut out quite a lotbecause I said
a titlethat we didn't agree was good.
And I agree with that, John.
It was. Good. John didn't.
I'm okayto on the side of caution.
So I've renamed this section.
But we also then went through
a series of other titlesand they got worse.
We crossed the lines,we crossed some personal lines.
(25:30):
Yeah, they got pretty bad.
They got pretty bad.
Anyway,this section is now titled
Fava Beans and a nice Chianti.
The medical supplies they had
found in the wreckagewere all gone
by the end of the first week,despite serious rationing,
with thingsstarting to get desperate.
The survivors started
turning to alternative methods,looking for food
like trying to eatthe leather of their belts.
(25:51):
This just made them sick
and eating the cotton stuffingfrom the plane seats. Oh,
being so highup in the mountains,
there was no vegetationor animal life
around to hunt or gather.
And so they were leftwith only one terrible option.
No vegetation or nothingthere about.
The tree line. Yeah.
You get that on your.
(26:12):
So high up 4000. What ish.
4000 ish meters.
Up 36. 36. Yeah.
It's high even on causeyou go like,
remember, there's no vegetationonce you get up.
Yeah. True.
I think there's still likegrass and stuff.
But the Andescontains the Atacama.
Like that elevated desertwhere there's nothing,
there's no bacteria.
(26:33):
It's so high and it's so dry
that there's, it'snever ever ever rained.
Yeah. Right.
The Andes is a very unique.
Just assume there wouldstill be bugs or something.
Not super. Unique.Part of the. Rocks.
Nothing super unique,by the way.
Yeah.
Raising the first person toraise the idea was Nando Prado,
who told the others that hewould start with the pilot.
(26:56):
The decisionwasn't made lightly,
with a lot of prayingto God for permission,
as well as consideration over
who would be eatenand who wouldn't.
Prado's mother and sisterhad been killed in the crash,
and their bodieswere put aside to be preserved.
I not eating Nando's ever again.
This.
After dark. Terrible.
(27:16):
He's the guy that inventedthe Nando's restaurant.
No teeth.
If that's where he startedthe food industry.
Up next on Cheeky Tales.
Shocking twists.
Now we're taking down.
Nando's.
After the group had largelydecided that they had to do
what had to be done.
Roberto Connoisseurwould find a sharp piece
(27:38):
of broken glass and set to workcutting some flesh to eat
without the abilityto light a fire.
They would have to eatthe flesh raw.
So the group stood and solemnlyate their first pieces of
their comrades.
Roberto, can I say, would
describe the feelingof those first bites.
Your mouth doesn't want to openbecause you don't
(27:58):
want to swallowa piece of a dead person.
And then I thought of my mother,and she told me that
if one of her sons would die,that she would die herself.
So I said, for not giving up,I have to eat this piece.
I just swallowed itand nothing happened.
And then he got a bit weirdabout it.
The first bite for me is likeyour first sexual relation.
(28:20):
You have lots of expectation.
Lots of things going to happen,and then it happens.
It's over. Life goes on.
The taste is like raw meatfrom a cow or whatever.
Little bit weird.
And he ruined it.
Yeah, it was nice.
I don't want to.
I don't want to buy his memoirnow. I'm good.
I know you don't like this one.
(28:40):
No, this is ten out of ten.
It's 11.
But in this situation.
Yeah, you do it right. Yeah.
It's to survive. Yeah.
And this is where I was goingwith it, right.
So they I think I cover it.
Yeah, I cover it in the nextparagraph, so I'll skip that.
But they made a, pactwith each other
that, like,hey, if I die, eat me.
(29:02):
And so they were kind of like
making a dealwith each other that they do it.
So I just want to say,boys eat me.
I'm okay with it.
If we're.If we're lost in the Andes.
In a survival situation.
You may eat part ofme. Please wait a few days.
I just straight away.
He didn't just clarify that. So,like, he could still be alive.
(29:23):
He just had to eat a part of it.We could cut his leg off.
If I die.
The element of my favorite game
of self-generatingchicken schnitzel.
Hand over. Again.
That's a little bitfillet to no bad.
But cut off part of his liverand we went for the regrown.
Eat it again.
So not everyone would eaton that first day,
with some holding out due tothe horrific nature of the act.
Yet eventually they would
(29:43):
all succumb to their hungerand start consuming.
They would eventually turnto drying out the meat
on the fuselage of the plane totry and make it easier to eat.
But of course, they were alwayseating people and they knew it.
There's even some photosfrom the crash site with like,
you can see the meatright in the background.
Yeah. What?
What part of a personare you eating? Buttocks.
(30:07):
Do you got a good muscle?
I don't want tothink about this.
Now that I've said it.This bit's going to get.
It's bit scary.
It's going to get achy.
But these people have to makethat decision. What?
What are you eating?
They said they startedwith skin.
In the fantastic psychologicalthriller Hannibal Rising.
He describes the cheeks arethe most tender part.
(30:28):
I don't think they would be likethat.
A lot of calories in just skin.
Well, that was the thing.
They started with skin
and then they moved onto everything else.
They even ate like brainsand hearts and stuff that.
Oh, that would be better offeating.
I'll be all right with organs.
I don't know if I could eat.
I don't think my heart or.Brain.
Brain has a texture about it.
I couldn't eat brain. Now I saybrain has a texture about it.
(30:50):
As if I write in human brains.Let's clarify.
I've eaten sheep's brains.This is quite common.
There's a sandy texture to it,and I can only assume
as an educated assumption.It's probably about.
It's probably about the same.
The thing is, like we're talkingis like we have a choice.
Like they didn'treally have a choice.
I know they didn'thave a choice, but like,
half human heart.
Yeah.
(31:11):
Like, I think like yousaid, muscle.
You go to large muscle groups.
Legs. Calves?
Yeah. Buttocks.
Pecs.
I wouldn't have I wouldn'thave thought brain or heart.
The next section is calledthis Mountain.
Really hates these guys.
At leastwith a source of food, though.
Now able to survivefor a while longer.
(31:31):
And that seemed to piss offthe mountain as the 18th night
was disturbed by an avalanche
barreling down the mountainto hit them,
the snow would enterthe fuselage and fill it,
burying 27 of the survivorsin their sleep.
It was 28 alive at this point.
Roberta Kennesaw and NandoParado were two of the buried,
and they were both.
And they both reportedfeeling that this was the end.
(31:53):
In Nando's words, he said thathe only had a few moments
left of his lifebefore he suffocated,
until the one guythat hadn't been buried
royally scratched
the snow off hisface to allow him to breathe.
Roy then moved on.
MVP level?
Yeah,probably the match right there.
What a yeah, what a champ.
Roy then moved onand found Roberto's arm
sticking out of the snowand pulled him out.
(32:14):
This went onand as people were afraid
that would help dig out others,eventually saving 19
of the survivors with eightsadly passing in the night
after they had pulled people
out of the snow,they suddenly realized that
with only one meter of a gapabove the snow,
they wouldquickly run out of oxygen
and so poked out a window in thefront of the fuselage for air
that let them survive the night,and the next morning
(32:35):
they dug a tunnel to the surfaceout of the cockpit,
but found that there wasa blizzard raging outside
and they were forcedto stay in the fuselage
for the next three days,
surrounded by the dead bodiesof those that had suffocated
in snow.
Yeah. So they preserved. Yes.
They would have to eatthese bodies on the third
day, trapped, making the sceneespecially grisly.
(32:56):
So they survived for three daysbefore they like.
We got to eat someone in herenow. Two.
And so off they went.
Yeah.
That would not be a great.
I'm just.
I'm picturing at that point,
a rescue party shows upand you walk down
into this thing,you just be like, whoa.
Yeah,that would not be a great spot.
You could seem to walk into.
(33:17):
After the blizzard passed,it was clear
that they would need to work outhow to get themselves rescued.
And so it was decidedthat they would pick
the strongest of the survivors,
prepare them for the trek,and then send them to the,
send them to climbthe mountains to go get help.
The copilot had repeatedly said
before he diedthat they had passed into Chile,
and there must be closeto a town to the west,
but with a huge mountainin the way,
they decidedthat was impossible.
(33:38):
And so they would head east
to start with to seewhat was there.
Roberto Kanza, Nando Parado,who remember, had almost died,
and Antonia Visintinwas selected for the journey
and were given increased meatrations and the warmest clothes.
They were also excusedfrom helping out the site
so that they could trainand conserve their energy.
After waiting a week
(33:59):
for the summer temperaturesto start to arrive,
they would set outeast to try and find help.
And nowwe get to the eastern trek.
They set out on the 15th of
November and started headingdownhill from the fuselage.
After just 1.6km of walking,they found the tail
section of the plane, whichstill had the galley intact.
(34:19):
They were able to findchocolate, white rum, coca cola,
ciggies, clothes,comic books, medicine
and the aircraft's batteries.
I spent the night in the tailsection, lighting a fire
and reading comics,
presumably enjoying some foodthat wasn't human flesh as well.
The next day they would attemptto continue their trek,
but after nearly freezingto death on the second night,
(34:41):
they turned back with the ideathat they would take the battery
from the tailback to the fuselage
to attempt to use the radioto call for help.
So they've had the aircraftradio back at the main site.
Once I got back to the tail,though, they found
that the batterieswere 24kg each
and far too heavy to carry.
They would decide
to go back to the main fuselage
(35:02):
and bring the radioback to the tail.
When they got back, RoyHarley joined them to help
as he had experiencewith electronics.
I spent a number of daystrying to get it to work,
but unfortunately the batterieswith 24 volt DC power
and the radio needed115 volt AC power.
And so it was never goingto work
with theequipment that they had left.
(35:22):
So they kindof just couldn't make it work.
They obviously
didn't have the invertersand yeah, and stuff required to
to get that way.
Everybody is running off thepower generated by the engines.
Well, I think the
I think the batteriesin the back
a designjust to stop the motors,
they're not supposed to poweranything. Power anything.
Yeah. Yeah.
That must have beenpretty devastating,
you know,like we're on to something that.
(35:44):
No, we're not.
Nevermind.
Spice it a couple of days. Yeah.
In the days of this easterntrek, three more survivors
succumbed to their injuries,leaving just 16 alive.
Of the original 45 on the plane,with their last
hope for eternal,for external recovery now gone.
The only option they hadwas to climb
the mountains to the westand try to get to civilization.
(36:06):
And nowwe get to the western trek
to survivethe trek up the mountain.
They needed a wayto safely survive
the freezing cold nights.
So a sleeping bag was fashioned
out of insulationfrom the rear of the fuselage,
electrical wire,and the waterproof fabric
that surrounded the plane'saircon unit.
Again, Roberta Kanza, Nando
Parado and Antonio Visintinwere selected for the journey,
(36:28):
but this time Antonio Visintinwould turn back early
to help conserve the supplies
that Roberto and Nandowould need to make the climb.
They would bundle upsome human meat and rugby socks
and set offon the 12th of December.
A little side notewith Antonio Visintin.
When they decidedto send him back,
they were basically at thetop of the Western Mountain
(36:49):
and he was like, you know what?
I'm going to sled back.
So he had like a doorfrom the plane
and use that as a sled to like,get his way back down to them.
So he got back inlike a couple of hours.
Cool.
It would take three daysfor the two men to climb
the first mountain to the west,
keeping in mindthey had no mountain
climbing experienceand no equipment, and were now
(37:10):
two months into their ordeal.
This was an incredibleachievement.
Yeah, that's a long timelike to be in a crash plane.
Yeah.
Sadly, they had expectedto reach the top of the mountain
and see a green valley, greenvalley with roads and towns.
But the pilots had been wrong.
They were still deepin the Andes Mountains,
and all they could seewere mountain tops.
(37:30):
After a few moments of despair,Parata would say to cancer,
we may be walking to our deaths,
but I would rather walkto meet my death.
And then white,
walk to meet my deaththan white for it to come to me,
cancer would reply.
You and I are friends, Nando.
We have been through so much.
Now let's go die together.
Just a picture of sunshine.Yeah.
(37:52):
Yeah.
They're actually, like,surprisingly poetic men.
Yeah.
They would decide to continue
on aiming for a narrow valley.
They saw in the distance
it would take seven daysto reach it.
But when they got therethey found the source of river.
So they started to follow it.
Probably usually follow waterwill take you to civilization.
Someone. Yeah. Yeah.
They would eventually findthe snow line.
(38:13):
Then an empty can of soup,then some cows.
And finally,
when setting up campfor the night,
the three horsemenacross the river.
The next day,one of the horsemen
would return,throw the stone over to them,
and set off on a ten hour rideto the nearest town to get help.
What do you find that bitso funny?
It's just I could just imaginethese two books, right?
(38:33):
The ordeal they've been on,they come across other people.
And they just, like, help. Ustomorrow, help us.
And then these other guys go offcamp,
come back in the morning,you guys.
Right? No.
12 hours later. Yeah.
No, we're not okay. A,
a little funny story.
There was an interviewwith both of these guys, and,
(38:54):
he was like,
the guy threw his bread as well,so he, like,
hopped bright over to them
and went off on his ten hourtrack to find someone.
And, the guy's like,
that were first guy is like,I think it was,
I think it was Kinzer.
He was like, yeah.
Nando said thatthere was two pieces of bread
when I talked to the guy
(39:15):
that rescued us later,he said that he threw for. So
and I was like.Eaten too quickly.
And he's like, oh,I like two bits of bread.
Bit of a dog meat. Yeah,
maybe. Right.
He's got a bit of pilotstill or whatever.
So then they asked.They asked Nando and he's like,
did Roberto say that?
I'm pretty sure
it was only three,but yeah, I did an extra one.
(39:38):
It was like a bit.
Cheeky between them,
Kanza and Prado had traveled
53.9km and had climbed 839m upthe mountain to the west,
and then to descended
1420 five meters backdown to meet the horseman.
Kanza had lost half his bodyweight,
weighing just 44 kiloswhen they were rescued.
(40:00):
They were found on the 21stof December,
70 days into the ordeal.
Over the next day,the Chilean Air Force
sent three helicopters outto meet Nando and Roberto,
and interviewed the twoto find the crash site.
Once the fog lifted on the 22nd,
Nando would accompanytwo of the helicopters
to the crash site to finallystart the rescue proper.
The helicopter couldonly touch down with one skid,
(40:23):
and due to the weight limits,
the two could only take halfthe survivors.
Four rescue workers would staywith the remaining survivors
for the night,
and would photographand map the area of the crash.
On the 23rd,the last of the survivors
would be lifted offthe mountain.
More than two and a half monthsafter the crash.
They would all be takento hospital
and be evaluated for treatment.
(40:44):
And despite their ordeal,as of today, there were still
12 of the 16 that made itout of the mountain alive.
The aftermath.
In the days after the survivalof the group was discovered,
the media descended on themto hear the story.
Obviously,one of the biggest questions was
how didyou survive with no supplies?
(41:04):
There was this
interview they like,what did you eat?
And they put the mic to himand he just goes,
and he looks at one of the othersurvivors.
He's like, we don't want to talkabout that right now.
It's like, well.
Initiallythe group were planning
to discuss the actual detailswith their families
and those of the deceased,
and so said
they had survived on cheeseand the local vegetation.
(41:27):
But on the 23rd of December,a newspaper posted photos
taken from the crash siteof half eaten legs,
and the story got out.
The group were immediately
under fire from the publicand faced a huge backlash.
But on the 28th of December,they held a press conference
to express their sideof the story,
particularlythat they had agreed
that they would allow themselvesto be eaten if they died.
(41:49):
They wouldalso get the blessing of priests
and even the pope to say
that they wouldn't be damnedwhat they had done.
And this,
along with their own testimony,managed to sway public opinion.
The families of those eatenwere also largely supportive
of the survivors
understanding the positionthey were in,
and the desperate nature ofthe decision to aid each other.
So if you see these guystalk about it,
(42:10):
they clearly likewe had to do this.
There was no alternative.
And the very
like you can tell they hated it.
They talk about itvery openly and very bluntly.
They're like, yep, we item.It was gross.
We didn't want to do it.
We had to do it to survive.
We were very respectfulabout it.
(42:32):
And you just watch it and go,oh yeah, like makes sense.
Of courseyou had to move on like.
Yeah, it's a matter of survival.
It's not like that is like
we've got all
these hamburgersthat are frozen, but,
Yeah, there was no other option,but I'll.
Jimmy, Jim, Bob! Over here.
He doesn't think.
Those that were left onthe mountain did were eventually
(42:54):
buried in a mass grave.
The Argentine governmentand the families of the victims
agreed to have a grave dug 400mto 800m from the wreckage,
with the priest
blessing the burial in private,
without eventhe family's present.
The side of the graves, nowa stone monument topped with a
cross, as well as a simple rockpile topped with a plaque.
They also set fireto the wreckage.
(43:15):
They doused in petrol, setfire to the plane
to try and, like,get rid of the fuselage.
But they said that in 1995,the bottom half of it
that was below the snow, hadn'tit was still there.
Yeah. And even today I saw a,
channel seven did a
story on it,
and they sent someone offin a helicopter,
and there's still, like,windows and stuff on the plane
and, like,little bits of wreckage here
(43:36):
and there and it's really, like,quite graphic to see it like,
oh, this happened here.
Yeah.
A small group of the survivorshave continued taking interviews
and talkingabout their experience,
in particular Roberto Kin ESAand Nando Parata, who made up
quite a lot of the informationfor this podcast.
(43:56):
So their interviews werepretty much
what I based this on. Yep.
As well as Wikipedia.
I'll be honest,they honesty and bluntness in
telling the story makes it clearthere's not much to hide.
Obviously,the story is in its place
in history
as an important example of howdetermination can overcome all,
it has also become an exampleof how a group of good leads,
(44:16):
a group with good leadershipand a strong sense of community,
can stay together in the faceof the harshest conditions.
And that is the story
of UruguayanAir Force Flight 571
pretty gross.
What a survival story though.
Unlike incrediblesurvival story.
Even the guys that just stayedat the camp amazing.
(44:38):
Amazing that they survived.
So total time from crashto rescue
was at two and a half months.
So that in two days.
Yeah, the last peoplewere taken off on the 72nd day.
71st day was when they firstgot the helicopters there.
After surviving a plane crash.
Yeah. So some legs. Yeah.
Some of those people had brokenlegs for.
Yeah, two monthsbefore medical treatment.
(44:58):
Like those boneswould have. Started healing.
Probably. Fuzing. Yeah. Yeah.
That to be readybroken and reset and.
And to to like
start eating peopleand then still be like
okay, we've got to do somethinghere.
Like got to get out ofhere. But even that just the,
the mental drain on being around
(45:18):
that many dead bodies for thatamount of time, like I don't
you couldn'tget used to it or not.
You couldn'tget used to just having.
No, no.
And then the climb toget out of there like they show.
They show whatsome of the mountains around
look like in the footagethat I saw of the crash site.
And it's. It's intense.
What they had to climb liketo get over it
(45:39):
today with modern climbingequipment.
Would be dead. Nando.
Yeah. Was.
Torres, Nando and Roberto,everybody?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Gross story,but incredible story.
Incredible.
Like the guy on the horse.
I just
I'd love to get his reactionof when he got the message of.
(46:00):
Yeah, with it, like,
because he would have knownthe planet crashed.
He knew about it? Yeah.
He wouldn't rememberhearing about it. Yeah.
He's likegetting the message of, like,
Crap.
We saw you last night, and.
Yeah, I just went,got drunk and slept for 12.
Yeah, yeah.
All right, I can't.
I'm like,I would imagine that for them
seeing himand then he just leaves. Yeah.
(46:22):
He'd be like what.
Would that feel. Like.Yeah. Yeah.
They were week.
To I guess. 44kilos is not the way to man.
Should I I.
I weighedwhen I was ten years old.
I remember being in the 40s.Yeah, yeah.
And they had planes flying overlike on the first couple
of nights. Like,imagine that feeling.
How did they keep going?
Like a radio call.
(46:43):
The radio call would be just.
Yeah, like you'd give up.
Yeah, but they didn't know.
They didn't.And they survived. So. Yeah,
it's caps off to the,
Oh, man, you uncultured.
That's that's rough.
(47:04):
And on that horrific.
No riffic night, a riffic night.
I think it's time to saygood night.
Yes, it's.
Probably a night before thathorrific night.
I'm sorry for that, everyone.Sorry, chicken.
Right story, though, I thought.
Props to me.
So, to two turboprops.
2 to 3 propsthat stay in the anime.
(47:25):
Anyway.
Good nighteveryone. Don't eat your.
Friends. Take it easy.
Unless I give you permission to.
That's true.
You've been listeningto Cheeky Tales podcast.
If you'd like to seesupplemental images
related to our episodesor to interact
with us about our episodes,hit us up on at cheeky.
Tell us pod on Instagram,Facebook and YouTube.
You can
watch our episodes on YouTubeor listen to them on Spotify,
(47:48):
Apple Podcasts or whatever.You get your podcasts.
A man and his twofriends are riding on horseback
through the mountainousterrain of Chile.
Someone get me coconuts!
It's getting late,and the horses are tired
from a day of riding.Alongside a river,
it's hard enough to hear yourself think,
let alone hold a conversationwith those around him.
Across the river,he spots two men who look like
(00:22):
they're setting up campfor the night
yelling out to him,but he can't hear a word.
He shouts back, “Tomorrow!”,
not really intendingto do anything about it,
but overnight,as he rests in bed,
he can't help but think,why are they calling out to me?
The next day,he rides back alone to the spot
and finds the two menin the light of the morning,
looking rake thin, like they'vewalked a thousand miles.
(00:45):
He throws anote and pencil stuck to a rock
across the river, and waitsfor the reply from the men.
The note comes backwith an unbelievable story.
“We were in a plane crash
and there are 14people left in the plane.
Can you help us?”
These men are survivorsfrom a crash
that will go down in history
(01:05):
as one of the most infamousincidents of all time.
This week on “IckyTales”, we're covering the story
of Uruguayan Air ForceFlight 571.
Not icky!
(01:32):
Sorry when you said.
It's been a nice day.
It has a heater on it.
When you
when you said the part whereyou shouted across the river,
you said that, right?
My first thought was likeyou shouted.
What's your name?
Oh, not icky tales.
We haven't done any talesfor a while.
Back with another Icky tales.
(01:54):
I'm excited. Yeah.
And this is one of the icky.
It stands. Oh, no.
It sounds like somethingmight actually happen.
Not like one of theselast sticky tiles
where nothing happened.
Hey. Hey.
You just said that no oneat each other or got murdered.
Oh, sounds like I'm going to behappy this time.
Oh, boy. Are you okay?
I don't like that.
That's the benchmark.
(02:16):
Now, this is now the benchmarkof John enjoying the story.
To some.
Someone has to get eaten.Or this.
Some get eaten.
Also, I think I'm 100%for eating tales.
At least. At least a leg.
Which reminds me,I seen an article today.
Some surgeon was finedfor amputating his own legs.
Yeah. Super weird. It'sso. Weird.
Yeah, odd that you can be finedfor doing that to yourself.
(02:40):
But anyway. Anyway.
Anyway, happy Father's Day.We're recording on Father's Day.
So it. Is. Sean.
Happy Father's Day,not you, aren't you, Chuck?
Happy Father's Day to you too.
I suck. Yeah. Go on,call yourself a cat.
Dad, say it out.
I will not say what happens.
You know, I haven't three kids.
Three catslike having one job. You know?
No. Happy Father'sDay to everyone out there.
(03:03):
You're doing a good job.
Well, not.
All of them.
It's been, like, three minutes.
So do you want to goand we'll just leave?
I want to tell a storyby himself.
Yeah. Didn't even have kids.
No, don't tell Mr.
UN. Don'truin a nice sentiment, please.
Who said I'm. Sorry?
(03:25):
Sorry?Who said he was a bad father?
Well, he just might have beena shitty person
who said he was a that.
Okay.
John Savage, going on recordas an Ivan Milat sympathizer.
Didn't have that on the cardsfor this week.
And going to be a 2025. Bingo.
It's a. Tough edit.
Well, for your mouth like that.
(03:46):
Geez, John,just drop that accent.
Oh, man. Alive.
I think it's timewe get into the story.
Are you sureyou're the one that brought him
up in the first place? Well,you said all dads are good.
I hadn'teven thought about him for.
Okay.
I also didn't say that either.
You can go backand check the tapes.
People check the tapes?
They should sound like RichardNixon didn't
(04:08):
know pipes on tires.
Actually, don't check them out.
Wait a minute.Why don't I take all the time?
Oh, no.
Oh, just a little contactinformation
is on the front of the carI installed at the door.
Oh, you didn't saythere was going to be tapes?
Yes, I did, sir.
You asked for itto be installed.
Yeah.
(04:30):
Go back and listento the Watergate episode.
It's a. Great effort.
Yeah, lots of that.
All right, well,the first section is titled.
The game played in Heavensends a Flight to hell. Yep.
Wrap us up, boy.
A little bonus and nibbleaway on us with your story.
That's good.
So this story starts
just like manya childhood story in school.
(04:53):
Did you say it was Uruguay?
Uruguayan Air Force flight five.
So is this a military plane?
No. Well,it is a military plane.
Okay, I will get to. Why?
It's an air force. Okay,
so the flight was a specialcharter for the Old Christians
Rugby Union Club,
a school with a rich rugbybackground in Uruguay
who was sending their old boysteam to play against another
(05:14):
old boys team in Santiago,Chile.
Rugby union.You love this story?
Yeah.
As soon as you said
the game played in heaven,I was like, that's.
That's what they refer to.Rugby union.
Oh, really? Yeah. It'ssomething.
Rugby is not mentionedafter the first paragraph.
But for context,if you're Australian
and you're foreign,you will have seen occasionally.
You can actuallyyou could get personalized
(05:35):
plates in Queenslandthat has that like rugby
union plates not a team sportspecific game played.
No actually.
Speaking of sports,
my god the Gabba next weekendis going to be rocking.
When the Lions.
Take on the sharks.
Yeah. When the Lions have
their last chanceat staying in the finals.
Well the Lions and the Sunsapplying for a grand final spot.
(05:57):
That's going to be.
Our that first semifinal spotthe Lions. Lost.
Well then the news got it wrong.
And then I was watching itthe tonight before.
Yes the news got it wrong. Yeah.
They said they were playing hardfor grand finals.
Literally never heard of that.
For a chanceat the grand final. Maybe.
And that technically true? Yes.
Anyway, it's going to be.Absolutely.
You know,
I would not want to be drivingpast the Gabba next weekend.
(06:20):
Don't catch nobody on that.
Sorry.
So someone. Said sport. It.
It was expensive to flyfrom Uruguay to Chile.
And with the Air Forceoffering charter flights.
What? What? Sorry.
The, clip of Homer justpopped in my head.
Oh, yeah.
(06:41):
If, you know, you know, grow up.
You know, I.
So the cheapest option wasto charter an Air Force flight.
Yep. So the rugby club'spresident
would book the flight
with the ideathat any extra seats
could be offered to familyand friends.
Lovely.
In the end,there were 40 passengers
and five crew on the flight,
including pilot ColonelJulio Cesar.
All right, as for fair, it is
(07:03):
Fernandez. Nope.
30 members of the team
and ten friendsand family of the team members.
The plane chartered was a FokkerF 27 friendship,
which is just a great namefor a plane.
I think the friendshippart of the park.
Both. Just a brilliant name.
Can confirm in militaryaircraft recognition,
it is referred to as the FokkerFriendship.
(07:25):
Yeah. No. Yeah.They don't skip over that.
They're like,not screw them numbers.
I don't thinkit's the friendship
because it's got a nice nose.
It's a happy looking plane.
I don't think,folk are still around.
No, no, I don't thinkthe company story anymore.
They probably got boughtby one of the.
Others that were quite prominentin World War two.
They were also quiteprominent for, like, prop
middle sized planes.
(07:47):
Which is not anindustry that really exists now.
Is it German? Okay.
All right. You look that up.
So this plane was a twinengine turboprop
with a classic wing overfuselage design. Yeah.
The plane had a, let's say,less than stellar safety record.
With Wikipedia listing 33incidents for this plane alone.
(08:07):
It had a fantasticnickname as well.
The lid slid thanks to itsweight and relatively weak.
Engines, but the great.
That is not a nicknameof a plane.
You, you want to be getting on?
No. Perfect nickname for what.
Happens to fly.
There was a stat that I readthat was something like of the
of the 80 of themthat were built,
33 crashed or somethinglike it was
(08:29):
it was more than a third of theone of them ever built crashed.
Picture this.
Picture yourself looking at.
You and I.We're going on a trip.
We're getting onto a plane.
We get our tickets,we rock up to the.
Are we having an airport?Be sure.
Are we getting a bite to eat.
We're sitting therehaving a bite to eat.
Having an airport be a
we got two tickets.
(08:49):
Says what plane room.
And I'll tell the young guy
you know the planewe're about to get on
called. The lid slid.
Its nickname is BlazingBall of Fire.
Yeah.
Its nickname is Doesn't Fly.
Good credit.
You think that means a third
of all these types of planescrashed?
Yeah. I'm not getting on that.
And then.And then I. Say to you.
Oh, the the Boeing 7370000.
(09:12):
Get them.
Get dunked Boeing.
Oh they take that.
Mister Boeing is sittingsomewhere at home at the moment.
Oh. Oh I think he's back.
When they hit the groundthey don't go Boeing.
Actuallyactually they probably do.
Sorry to anyone that lost,family members on those planes.
How insensitive ofyou. Not my hate, not those.
(09:36):
You going to have the best time
editing that out?
Not a chance.
Oh. Come on. So, damn.
Sean's heavy on the edits. Yeah,he doesn't want me to say.
Just cut.
All the fun and he.
Really want to gag me so much.
I guess you could do thatwhen I leave.
You can't. Say gag.
There are so many wordsthat you just shouldn't
(09:57):
say on podcasts or YouTube,and gag is one of them.
Lubricate is another one.
Okay,then why are you saying it on.
The show of intentionallysaying it?
Panties is another.
100 that they only got Charles.
And the line van. The line is
Nick is asking Nick, is thiswhat King is worth?
(10:18):
Yeah, baby. What is that?
Is the nickthat is your top command.
Who said that? Yeah.
If you want to knowwhat I'm talking about,
go back and listento the Lady Die episode.
Princess Diane.
Of Data dump that episode.
So this flightinitially took off on Thursday,
the 12th of October, 1972.
(10:39):
On the lead sled.
Yes, it did,
but as it got
closer to the Andesmountain range,
the weather took a turnfor the worse,
and it was forced
to land in Mendozato stay there for the night.
It was a bad joke.
The Andes mountain range is badand was bad.
But Buzz and Woody saidnothing. No.
I miss you.
(10:59):
Let's golf like a battleof a battleship jungle.
I mean.
On the morning of Fridaythe 13th to spooky. Oh.
The weatherstill hadn't improved,
but by the afternoon,it was looking good.
Was it foggy?
It was foggy.
It was stormy. It was not good.
But in the.
In theafternoon, it was looking good.
So the flight took off againto start the final
(11:20):
90 minuteleg to Santiago at 2:18 p.m.,
while Mendoza was almostdirectly east of Santiago.
I did mention that there weresome mountains in the way.
The big boys.
The big boys of South America,the Andes.
If the plane were to flydirectly west,
it would need to go over the topof the Mount Aconcagua.
That's not how you say it,but good luck
(11:42):
working that out yourself.
A 77,000 meter behemoththat wouldn't
leave much room in the plane'sservice ceiling.
Rather than risk that,
the regular rat
would fly a U-shaped coursecutting south from Mendoza,
west abovesome shorter mountains,
and then north againto Santiago.
As you ready,Sean? It's a cone. Oh, it's
(12:03):
Aconcagua.
I've got it.
Are you ready to say it? Go!
What?
I'm here
for a konichiwa.
That's a bit weird, because.
I want to put a bit of pressureon. Amazing.
It is not that easy to say no.
And the phoneticspelling of it away on there.
By 321, the pilot for radiushad handed over flight
(12:25):
controls to copilot LieutenantColonel Dante Hector Laguna.
You have the controls? Yeah.
So the copilot could gainsome experience.
The copilot would sayI have the controls. Yes.
Except this timehe said a lot worse. Oh.
While the weather was clearenough for flight, it wasn't
clear enough for visual flightconditions. VFR.
(12:46):
So they were using instrumentsto keep track of their location
for orders.
Would make a call to the cabin
that they were
about into some turbulence,and then radioed into
air traffic control.
They were a minuteaway from the next check in.
Actually, they were60 to 69, nine kilometers away.
Have you made their final turn?
Made their turn to the westand to the north.
Too early.
(13:07):
At this point,
they believe they had
flown away from the Andes,but they were still right on top
in cabin.
There wasn't any cluethat anything was wrong.
The passengers were stilltaking photos.
Some of which are incrediblyhaunting today.
Knowing what was to come.
That photo,
the last photo from insidethe plane will be in the,
photos that we put up on social.
(13:27):
Supplemental content.
That's it.
As the aircraftstarted its descent,
they hit the promised turbulenceas they flew on.
As one of the survivorsrecalled someone saying,
we seem to close to the ground.
And they were right.
Suddenly, the pilots realized
their mistakeas a mountain ridge
came out of the cloudsin front of them.
They would put the planeto full power
and pull back on the stick.
(13:48):
So the plane wasalmost vertical.
Unfortunately, as I said before,the engines on the Fokker
weren't up to the taskand the plane started to stall
as the grand coalition collisionalarms started to blare.
There was no doubt in the cabinwhat was about to come next.
What they were headingtowards was a glacier.
And while the nose of the planemade it over the ridge,
the tail section didn't.
(14:08):
Clipping the ridge
at 3:34 p.m., at an altitudeabove sea level of 4200m.
That's pretty unlucky to.
Flip it.
Yeah.
The entire tailsection was torn off,
including two rows of seats,which contained three
passengers. The navigatorand a flight attendant.
Next, the rightwing smashed into the ground,
(14:30):
followed by the leftwing tearing both off.
It would crest another ridge,
now, throwing the peoplefrom the plane as it went,
and started a 725 metersled ride down the mountain.
That's why I said the sled.
When the fuselage
finally crashed into the
into a snowbank,
it would kill the pilotimmediately
crush the copilot and force
(14:50):
all the seats in the cabinforward into the forward
bulkhead, injuring and killingmany left inside.
The plane had come to rest 80kmaway from its planned route,
at an elevation of 3675m,
which is about acan about a K higher than the
highest mountain in Australia.
So if you've ever done,
casa usko imagine a half of itagain on top.
(15:13):
That's where they werein this crashed out plane.
Besidesthe plane had a bad record.
Seems to be kind
of like pilot errorat this point for this plane.
Yeah, this one was.
Wasn't like a mechanical. Yeah.
They just don'tknow where they were.
Yeah.
Which, you know,most accidents are that.
Which is, Yeah.
Very similar to the F-16 crash.
(15:35):
I don't know if you're seeing
the footage of the F-16that was practicing for, Asia.
Yes, I did say that.
It was.
He started his maneuver.
About 600ft lowerthan what he should have,
because the airfield was 600ft.Above the airfield.
I did hear thathe was using the radio.
He wasn't using the radioaltimeters using that.
He was using the,the air altimeter.
(15:57):
So there's two altimeters.
One that, does air pressure,which takes it from sea level,
and one that does radar,which bounces off the ground
to give youhow high off the ground you are.
And he used the wrong oneand yeah unfortunately crashed.
So injuries on board were variedbut gruesome.
Those that died mostly died ofinjuries from the crash itself.
(16:17):
But one notable differencewas Carlos Violeta who survived
being ejected from the wreckageas it slid down the mountain.
But as he made his way downtowards the fuselage,
fell into deep snowand asphyxiated.
Okay,
although you got to saysomething
like he fell into a bearsden or something.
No, but like,imagine you survive. Yeah, yeah.
A plane back, and then you justfall in snow and die.
Yeah.
(16:38):
Which also made me think ofwhen we went on that hike
through the snow. And we justsuddenly went into, like.
What? Really soft snow.
Not deep snow.
And like, if that had just.
Kept going. By steep.
What what what.
Yeah.
I quitedidn't quite get to the waist.
Didn't get to the way.
Why usethat is the reference point.
Much like the mountain rangethere in it hit.
(17:00):
And these nuts.
Boom.
You feel free to cut that.
Oh, that's that's real content.
That's high quality comedy.When you tap on
Andes in Wikipedia,it shows you how to say it.
And it's a n hyphen d.
E d and my and these.
All right.
It's a it's ait's a it's a it's nuts.
(17:21):
All right. Back to the group.
Sorry that people just died,Sean. And you're making nachos.
Oh, here we go.
Makes the bowing to. Yeah.
That was me.
I was.
I'll take credit for that.
We got to get demonetized.
Oh, no. Oh, right.
You're making money off.
Yeah. Are you guys on.
Those who hadn't died out?
A variety of broken legs,ribs, arms and skull fractures.
(17:44):
I'm sponsored by three mobile.
You guys a skull fracture?
Sean's skull fracture. Come on.
You know it doesn't give youa skull fracture.
Great video. Gary.
Moving into today's
sponsorship video, hereI am talking about
the sponsorshipin a slightly different shirt.
Maybe three mobile one, becausethey found the old bricks on.
Exactly. Get dunked.
One passenger was even piercedby a piece of metal.
(18:07):
And when it was removed,it pulled out
some of his intestines. Oh.
Oh one notableinjury was that of Nando Prado,
who suffered a skull fractureand was left unconscious.
He was left outsidewith the rest of the dead,
with the passengersthinking he was soon to die.
Three dayslater, though, he came to
with the cold of the snow,
(18:28):
having to manage to keepthe swelling in his brain
in check longenough for him to recover. Andy?
Yeah.
Andy in the Andes.
Asidefrom that piece of good news,
there wasn't much else.
Of the 45 people on board.
Only 33 people survived
to see the first sunriseafter the crash.
That's not too bad.
Not powerfulfor a plane crash. Yeah,
(18:50):
but the survivors were now aloneon the mountain,
waiting to seeif anyone would come to help.
In the meantime, they would tryand assess their situation.
They had no warm clothes.
Many were injured,
and they didn't seemto have much in the way of food.
After gathering all the suppliesleft on the plane,
they had only eight chocolatebars, three small jars of jam,
a tin of mussels,a tin of almonds, a few dates,
(19:13):
some candy dried plumsand several bottles of wine.
The in-flight serviceon this point seems seems awful.
It is a bit weird.
Here's your jam and mussels.
I suppose it is a military planethey've chartered.
It's like a commercial planeto expect.
Whereas might have also
just been foodthat they brought with them.
Yeah. Where'swhere's the beer and whiskey?
(19:34):
Well, there was wine.
Okay.
And they laterfound a bottle of white rum.
That the pilot's personal stash.
No, we'll get to it.
Okay.
At the search falters and thefight for survival continues.
It would take just an hour
for the authoritiesto raise the alarm.
With four aircraftstarting to search
for the plane'slast known position.
(19:55):
I mean.
That's still a long timefor a plane crash.
I mean. Kind of.
Yeah. But remember,there's no radar.
What they didn't have right upon the nav radar at the airport.
Okay.
So they didn't really knowwhere the plane was.
And there's like a certainamount of time
that you just kind ofexpect them to not be.
So when, when one,when the plane leaves one
air traffic controltower, there's probably,
(20:17):
empty space until it's meantto check in at the next one.
Yeah.
Where it's going,if especially if it's
coming over a mountain range.
I'm going to assume this.
Nothing. Yeah.
Yeah, I can make sense.
There was only one problem.
The plane wasn'tat its last known location.
The search was happeningin Chile
when the plane hadn'teven made it out of Argentina.
(20:38):
Obviously, they didn't find it.
And the next day, 11 aircrafttook part in the search.
This timeexpanding the search area
and in fact,covering the site of the crash.
Survivors reportedhearing the aircraft overhead
and attempted to write S.O.S.
in lipstickon the top of the fuselage
and laying out their bagsin a large cross.
Unfortunately,despite having planes overhead
(20:58):
three times,they were never spotted
in the white plainon white snow. Okay.
And like when you see photosof it later, you kind of get it.
Yeah.
There are photosof the of them being found.
And you look at it and go.
Ooh. Yeah.
I kind of get how they miss thatwhen they're in a plane. Yep.
While this was going on,
the survivorswere doing their best
(21:18):
to try and give themselvesevery chance of survival.
They had pulled all of thebroken seats and wreckage
from inside the fuselageto make a makeshift shelter
and use the luggage seatsand snow
to block the openend at the tail.
The seat covers were usedas makeshift coats,
and the seat cushions were usedas snowshoes.
One of the passengersmade a solar powered water
(21:39):
collector to melt snowfrom broken sheet metal.
It's some ingenuity happening,though.
It's not. Yeah.
Someone made sunglassesout of green plastic visors
from the cockpitand a bra to, and bra fabric.
Fabric to, to combatthe snow blindness.
Okay, that makes sense. Then.
Yeah.
Despite their resourcefulness,though,
they were still way out
(21:59):
of their depth with no survivaltraining or alpine experience,
no medical supplies,and with most of them injured
in some way,
morale was further dentedby another
five deathsin the next 24 hours.
Oh, and most of these peopleobviously.
Would they all know each other?Yeah.
The football team? Yeah.
It's not a group of strangerson a plane together. It's
(22:20):
like I said all night.
Well, Nando Parado,the one that had the skull
fracture, got left in the snow.
He had his mother and sisteron the plane.
Okay.
And his sister diedafter he woke up.
Spoiler.
During their searchfor supplies,
they also found an Amradio wedged between two seats.
(22:41):
After improvising a long antennaon the 11th day,
they would switch on the antennawith the hope of hearing
some good newsabout their search for them.
So the meaning of this ninefor 11 dies now? Yeah.
Oh, already? Yeah.
They would be devastatedto learn that nobody was coming.
Those muscles aren't lastingthat much.
No, no, they.
There was a story of one guy
eating a single chocolate coatedalmond over three days.
(23:04):
Okay. Yeah. It's like.
Back to the search.
They'd been at it for eight days
with no trace of the downflight.
They had only flownover the site on the first day.
So they had clearly decidedto focus elsewhere
as weather conditions worsened
and the search hitits eighth day.
The search was called offby the authorities,
with the planto search again for the bodies
(23:25):
when the snow meltedin December.
Okay.
This would be broadcast,
out through the mediaover the next few days,
devastating the family of thosestill unaccounted for,
as well as those at the crash.
It's badwhen they're just already.
It's a recovery search,not a rescue search.
Yeah.
And they just go, oh,we can't do it for three months.
Like,
(23:45):
oh, hearing this many survivorswould break down in tears.
And then, yeah,the hearing it on the radio to.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah. 11 days in two.
So they've already been there11 days
and they finally hear thisand they're hearing.
Yeah. From the bodies.
That's got to suck.
(24:05):
As the group startedto be overcome with despair.
One of the survivors,Gustavo Nikolic.
Nikolic would look at ita different way.
He would say,that's some good news.
They've called off the search.
That means that we're goingto get out of here on our own.
Maybejust a little bit of courage,
but a whole lot of delusion.
But it turned out in the end,you'd be right.
(24:27):
Kind of.
Because instead ofjust sitting around
waiting for someone, it's like,okay, now,
because you'd havethat indecision, would
you'd be like, do we go?What do we do?
We take off,or do we just stay in place?
So right now they know they havea definitive decision made.
We're going to.
They do say that you are safer
staying where you areif there's a search for you.
That's correct.
If there's a search for.
(24:47):
To an extent. Yeah.
And if there's no search for youin this circumstance.
Yeah.
Got to do something.
(25:08):
Okay, so what?
We just cut out quite a lotbecause I said
a titlethat we didn't agree was good.
And I agree with that, John.
It was. Good. John didn't.
I'm okayto on the side of caution.
So I've renamed this section.
But we also then went through
a series of other titlesand they got worse.
We crossed the lines,we crossed some personal lines.
(25:30):
Yeah, they got pretty bad.
They got pretty bad.
Anyway,this section is now titled
Fava Beans and a nice Chianti.
The medical supplies they had
found in the wreckagewere all gone
by the end of the first week,despite serious rationing,
with thingsstarting to get desperate.
The survivors started
turning to alternative methods,looking for food
like trying to eatthe leather of their belts.
(25:51):
This just made them sick
and eating the cotton stuffingfrom the plane seats. Oh,
being so highup in the mountains,
there was no vegetationor animal life
around to hunt or gather.
And so they were leftwith only one terrible option.
No vegetation or nothingthere about.
The tree line. Yeah.
You get that on your.
(26:12):
So high up 4000. What ish.
4000 ish meters.
Up 36. 36. Yeah.
It's high even on causeyou go like,
remember, there's no vegetationonce you get up.
Yeah. True.
I think there's still likegrass and stuff.
But the Andescontains the Atacama.
Like that elevated desertwhere there's nothing,
there's no bacteria.
(26:33):
It's so high and it's so dry
that there's, it'snever ever ever rained.
Yeah. Right.
The Andes is a very unique.
Just assume there wouldstill be bugs or something.
Not super. Unique.Part of the. Rocks.
Nothing super unique,by the way.
Yeah.
Raising the first person toraise the idea was Nando Prado,
who told the others that hewould start with the pilot.
(26:56):
The decisionwasn't made lightly,
with a lot of prayingto God for permission,
as well as consideration over
who would be eatenand who wouldn't.
Prado's mother and sisterhad been killed in the crash,
and their bodieswere put aside to be preserved.
I not eating Nando's ever again.
This.
After dark. Terrible.
(27:16):
He's the guy that inventedthe Nando's restaurant.
No teeth.
If that's where he startedthe food industry.
Up next on Cheeky Tales.
Shocking twists.
Now we're taking down.
Nando's.
After the group had largelydecided that they had to do
what had to be done.
Roberto Connoisseurwould find a sharp piece
(27:38):
of broken glass and set to workcutting some flesh to eat
without the abilityto light a fire.
They would have to eatthe flesh raw.
So the group stood and solemnlyate their first pieces of
their comrades.
Roberto, can I say, would
describe the feelingof those first bites.
Your mouth doesn't want to openbecause you don't
(27:58):
want to swallowa piece of a dead person.
And then I thought of my mother,and she told me that
if one of her sons would die,that she would die herself.
So I said, for not giving up,I have to eat this piece.
I just swallowed itand nothing happened.
And then he got a bit weirdabout it.
The first bite for me is likeyour first sexual relation.
(28:20):
You have lots of expectation.
Lots of things going to happen,and then it happens.
It's over. Life goes on.
The taste is like raw meatfrom a cow or whatever.
Little bit weird.
And he ruined it.
Yeah, it was nice.
I don't want to.
I don't want to buy his memoirnow. I'm good.
I know you don't like this one.
(28:40):
No, this is ten out of ten.
It's 11.
But in this situation.
Yeah, you do it right. Yeah.
It's to survive. Yeah.
And this is where I was goingwith it, right.
So they I think I cover it.
Yeah, I cover it in the nextparagraph, so I'll skip that.
But they made a, pactwith each other
that, like,hey, if I die, eat me.
(29:02):
And so they were kind of like
making a dealwith each other that they do it.
So I just want to say,boys eat me.
I'm okay with it.
If we're.If we're lost in the Andes.
In a survival situation.
You may eat part ofme. Please wait a few days.
I just straight away.
He didn't just clarify that. So,like, he could still be alive.
(29:23):
He just had to eat a part of it.We could cut his leg off.
If I die.
The element of my favorite game
of self-generatingchicken schnitzel.
Hand over. Again.
That's a little bitfillet to no bad.
But cut off part of his liverand we went for the regrown.
Eat it again.
So not everyone would eaton that first day,
with some holding out due tothe horrific nature of the act.
Yet eventually they would
(29:43):
all succumb to their hungerand start consuming.
They would eventually turnto drying out the meat
on the fuselage of the plane totry and make it easier to eat.
But of course, they were alwayseating people and they knew it.
There's even some photosfrom the crash site with like,
you can see the meatright in the background.
Yeah. What?
What part of a personare you eating? Buttocks.
(30:07):
Do you got a good muscle?
I don't want tothink about this.
Now that I've said it.This bit's going to get.
It's bit scary.
It's going to get achy.
But these people have to makethat decision. What?
What are you eating?
They said they startedwith skin.
In the fantastic psychologicalthriller Hannibal Rising.
He describes the cheeks arethe most tender part.
(30:28):
I don't think they would be likethat.
A lot of calories in just skin.
Well, that was the thing.
They started with skin
and then they moved onto everything else.
They even ate like brainsand hearts and stuff that.
Oh, that would be better offeating.
I'll be all right with organs.
I don't know if I could eat.
I don't think my heart or.Brain.
Brain has a texture about it.
I couldn't eat brain. Now I saybrain has a texture about it.
(30:50):
As if I write in human brains.Let's clarify.
I've eaten sheep's brains.This is quite common.
There's a sandy texture to it,and I can only assume
as an educated assumption.It's probably about.
It's probably about the same.
The thing is, like we're talkingis like we have a choice.
Like they didn'treally have a choice.
I know they didn'thave a choice, but like,
half human heart.
Yeah.
(31:11):
Like, I think like yousaid, muscle.
You go to large muscle groups.
Legs. Calves?
Yeah. Buttocks.
Pecs.
I wouldn't have I wouldn'thave thought brain or heart.
The next section is calledthis Mountain.
Really hates these guys.
At leastwith a source of food, though.
Now able to survivefor a while longer.
(31:31):
And that seemed to piss offthe mountain as the 18th night
was disturbed by an avalanche
barreling down the mountainto hit them,
the snow would enterthe fuselage and fill it,
burying 27 of the survivorsin their sleep.
It was 28 alive at this point.
Roberta Kennesaw and NandoParado were two of the buried,
and they were both.
And they both reportedfeeling that this was the end.
(31:53):
In Nando's words, he said thathe only had a few moments
left of his lifebefore he suffocated,
until the one guythat hadn't been buried
royally scratched
the snow off hisface to allow him to breathe.
Roy then moved on.
MVP level?
Yeah,probably the match right there.
What a yeah, what a champ.
Roy then moved onand found Roberto's arm
sticking out of the snowand pulled him out.
(32:14):
This went onand as people were afraid
that would help dig out others,eventually saving 19
of the survivors with eightsadly passing in the night
after they had pulled people
out of the snow,they suddenly realized that
with only one meter of a gapabove the snow,
they wouldquickly run out of oxygen
and so poked out a window in thefront of the fuselage for air
that let them survive the night,and the next morning
(32:35):
they dug a tunnel to the surfaceout of the cockpit,
but found that there wasa blizzard raging outside
and they were forcedto stay in the fuselage
for the next three days,
surrounded by the dead bodiesof those that had suffocated
in snow.
Yeah. So they preserved. Yes.
They would have to eatthese bodies on the third
day, trapped, making the sceneespecially grisly.
(32:56):
So they survived for three daysbefore they like.
We got to eat someone in herenow. Two.
And so off they went.
Yeah.
That would not be a great.
I'm just.
I'm picturing at that point,
a rescue party shows upand you walk down
into this thing,you just be like, whoa.
Yeah,that would not be a great spot.
You could seem to walk into.
(33:17):
After the blizzard passed,it was clear
that they would need to work outhow to get themselves rescued.
And so it was decidedthat they would pick
the strongest of the survivors,
prepare them for the trek,and then send them to the,
send them to climbthe mountains to go get help.
The copilot had repeatedly said
before he diedthat they had passed into Chile,
and there must be closeto a town to the west,
but with a huge mountainin the way,
they decidedthat was impossible.
(33:38):
And so they would head east
to start with to seewhat was there.
Roberto Kanza, Nando Parado,who remember, had almost died,
and Antonia Visintinwas selected for the journey
and were given increased meatrations and the warmest clothes.
They were also excusedfrom helping out the site
so that they could trainand conserve their energy.
After waiting a week
(33:59):
for the summer temperaturesto start to arrive,
they would set outeast to try and find help.
And nowwe get to the eastern trek.
They set out on the 15th of
November and started headingdownhill from the fuselage.
After just 1.6km of walking,they found the tail
section of the plane, whichstill had the galley intact.
(34:19):
They were able to findchocolate, white rum, coca cola,
ciggies, clothes,comic books, medicine
and the aircraft's batteries.
I spent the night in the tailsection, lighting a fire
and reading comics,
presumably enjoying some foodthat wasn't human flesh as well.
The next day they would attemptto continue their trek,
but after nearly freezingto death on the second night,
(34:41):
they turned back with the ideathat they would take the battery
from the tailback to the fuselage
to attempt to use the radioto call for help.
So they've had the aircraftradio back at the main site.
Once I got back to the tail,though, they found
that the batterieswere 24kg each
and far too heavy to carry.
They would decide
to go back to the main fuselage
(35:02):
and bring the radioback to the tail.
When they got back, RoyHarley joined them to help
as he had experiencewith electronics.
I spent a number of daystrying to get it to work,
but unfortunately the batterieswith 24 volt DC power
and the radio needed115 volt AC power.
And so it was never goingto work
with theequipment that they had left.
(35:22):
So they kindof just couldn't make it work.
They obviously
didn't have the invertersand yeah, and stuff required to
to get that way.
Everybody is running off thepower generated by the engines.
Well, I think the
I think the batteriesin the back
a designjust to stop the motors,
they're not supposed to poweranything. Power anything.
Yeah. Yeah.
That must have beenpretty devastating,
you know,like we're on to something that.
(35:44):
No, we're not.
Nevermind.
Spice it a couple of days. Yeah.
In the days of this easterntrek, three more survivors
succumbed to their injuries,leaving just 16 alive.
Of the original 45 on the plane,with their last
hope for eternal,for external recovery now gone.
The only option they hadwas to climb
the mountains to the westand try to get to civilization.
(36:06):
And nowwe get to the western trek
to survivethe trek up the mountain.
They needed a wayto safely survive
the freezing cold nights.
So a sleeping bag was fashioned
out of insulationfrom the rear of the fuselage,
electrical wire,and the waterproof fabric
that surrounded the plane'saircon unit.
Again, Roberta Kanza, Nando
Parado and Antonio Visintinwere selected for the journey,
(36:28):
but this time Antonio Visintinwould turn back early
to help conserve the supplies
that Roberto and Nandowould need to make the climb.
They would bundle upsome human meat and rugby socks
and set offon the 12th of December.
A little side notewith Antonio Visintin.
When they decidedto send him back,
they were basically at thetop of the Western Mountain
(36:49):
and he was like, you know what?
I'm going to sled back.
So he had like a doorfrom the plane
and use that as a sled to like,get his way back down to them.
So he got back inlike a couple of hours.
Cool.
It would take three daysfor the two men to climb
the first mountain to the west,
keeping in mindthey had no mountain
climbing experienceand no equipment, and were now
(37:10):
two months into their ordeal.
This was an incredibleachievement.
Yeah, that's a long timelike to be in a crash plane.
Yeah.
Sadly, they had expectedto reach the top of the mountain
and see a green valley, greenvalley with roads and towns.
But the pilots had been wrong.
They were still deepin the Andes Mountains,
and all they could seewere mountain tops.
(37:30):
After a few moments of despair,Parata would say to cancer,
we may be walking to our deaths,
but I would rather walkto meet my death.
And then white,
walk to meet my deaththan white for it to come to me,
cancer would reply.
You and I are friends, Nando.
We have been through so much.
Now let's go die together.
Just a picture of sunshine.Yeah.
(37:52):
Yeah.
They're actually, like,surprisingly poetic men.
Yeah.
They would decide to continue
on aiming for a narrow valley.
They saw in the distance
it would take seven daysto reach it.
But when they got therethey found the source of river.
So they started to follow it.
Probably usually follow waterwill take you to civilization.
Someone. Yeah. Yeah.
They would eventually findthe snow line.
(38:13):
Then an empty can of soup,then some cows.
And finally,
when setting up campfor the night,
the three horsemenacross the river.
The next day,one of the horsemen
would return,throw the stone over to them,
and set off on a ten hour rideto the nearest town to get help.
What do you find that bitso funny?
It's just I could just imaginethese two books, right?
(38:33):
The ordeal they've been on,they come across other people.
And they just, like, help. Ustomorrow, help us.
And then these other guys go offcamp,
come back in the morning,you guys.
Right? No.
12 hours later. Yeah.
No, we're not okay. A,
a little funny story.
There was an interviewwith both of these guys, and,
(38:54):
he was like,
the guy threw his bread as well,so he, like,
hopped bright over to them
and went off on his ten hourtrack to find someone.
And, the guy's like,
that were first guy is like,I think it was,
I think it was Kinzer.
He was like, yeah.
Nando said thatthere was two pieces of bread
when I talked to the guy
(39:15):
that rescued us later,he said that he threw for. So
and I was like.Eaten too quickly.
And he's like, oh,I like two bits of bread.
Bit of a dog meat. Yeah,
maybe. Right.
He's got a bit of pilotstill or whatever.
So then they asked.They asked Nando and he's like,
did Roberto say that?
I'm pretty sure
it was only three,but yeah, I did an extra one.
(39:38):
It was like a bit.
Cheeky between them,
Kanza and Prado had traveled
53.9km and had climbed 839m upthe mountain to the west,
and then to descended
1420 five meters backdown to meet the horseman.
Kanza had lost half his bodyweight,
weighing just 44 kiloswhen they were rescued.
(40:00):
They were found on the 21stof December,
70 days into the ordeal.
Over the next day,the Chilean Air Force
sent three helicopters outto meet Nando and Roberto,
and interviewed the twoto find the crash site.
Once the fog lifted on the 22nd,
Nando would accompanytwo of the helicopters
to the crash site to finallystart the rescue proper.
The helicopter couldonly touch down with one skid,
(40:23):
and due to the weight limits,
the two could only take halfthe survivors.
Four rescue workers would staywith the remaining survivors
for the night,
and would photographand map the area of the crash.
On the 23rd,the last of the survivors
would be lifted offthe mountain.
More than two and a half monthsafter the crash.
They would all be takento hospital
and be evaluated for treatment.
(40:44):
And despite their ordeal,as of today, there were still
12 of the 16 that made itout of the mountain alive.
The aftermath.
In the days after the survivalof the group was discovered,
the media descended on themto hear the story.
Obviously,one of the biggest questions was
how didyou survive with no supplies?
(41:04):
There was this
interview they like,what did you eat?
And they put the mic to himand he just goes,
and he looks at one of the othersurvivors.
He's like, we don't want to talkabout that right now.
It's like, well.
Initiallythe group were planning
to discuss the actual detailswith their families
and those of the deceased,
and so said
they had survived on cheeseand the local vegetation.
(41:27):
But on the 23rd of December,a newspaper posted photos
taken from the crash siteof half eaten legs,
and the story got out.
The group were immediately
under fire from the publicand faced a huge backlash.
But on the 28th of December,they held a press conference
to express their sideof the story,
particularlythat they had agreed
that they would allow themselvesto be eaten if they died.
(41:49):
They wouldalso get the blessing of priests
and even the pope to say
that they wouldn't be damnedwhat they had done.
And this,
along with their own testimony,managed to sway public opinion.
The families of those eatenwere also largely supportive
of the survivors
understanding the positionthey were in,
and the desperate nature ofthe decision to aid each other.
So if you see these guystalk about it,
(42:10):
they clearly likewe had to do this.
There was no alternative.
And the very
like you can tell they hated it.
They talk about itvery openly and very bluntly.
They're like, yep, we item.It was gross.
We didn't want to do it.
We had to do it to survive.
We were very respectfulabout it.
(42:32):
And you just watch it and go,oh yeah, like makes sense.
Of courseyou had to move on like.
Yeah, it's a matter of survival.
It's not like that is like
we've got all
these hamburgersthat are frozen, but,
Yeah, there was no other option,but I'll.
Jimmy, Jim, Bob! Over here.
He doesn't think.
Those that were left onthe mountain did were eventually
(42:54):
buried in a mass grave.
The Argentine governmentand the families of the victims
agreed to have a grave dug 400mto 800m from the wreckage,
with the priest
blessing the burial in private,
without eventhe family's present.
The side of the graves, nowa stone monument topped with a
cross, as well as a simple rockpile topped with a plaque.
They also set fireto the wreckage.
(43:15):
They doused in petrol, setfire to the plane
to try and, like,get rid of the fuselage.
But they said that in 1995,the bottom half of it
that was below the snow, hadn'tit was still there.
Yeah. And even today I saw a,
channel seven did a
story on it,
and they sent someone offin a helicopter,
and there's still, like,windows and stuff on the plane
and, like,little bits of wreckage here
(43:36):
and there and it's really, like,quite graphic to see it like,
oh, this happened here.
Yeah.
A small group of the survivorshave continued taking interviews
and talkingabout their experience,
in particular Roberto Kin ESAand Nando Parata, who made up
quite a lot of the informationfor this podcast.
(43:56):
So their interviews werepretty much
what I based this on. Yep.
As well as Wikipedia.
I'll be honest,they honesty and bluntness in
telling the story makes it clearthere's not much to hide.
Obviously,the story is in its place
in history
as an important example of howdetermination can overcome all,
it has also become an exampleof how a group of good leads,
(44:16):
a group with good leadershipand a strong sense of community,
can stay together in the faceof the harshest conditions.
And that is the story
of UruguayanAir Force Flight 571
pretty gross.
What a survival story though.
Unlike incrediblesurvival story.
Even the guys that just stayedat the camp amazing.
(44:38):
Amazing that they survived.
So total time from crashto rescue
was at two and a half months.
So that in two days.
Yeah, the last peoplewere taken off on the 72nd day.
71st day was when they firstgot the helicopters there.
After surviving a plane crash.
Yeah. So some legs. Yeah.
Some of those people had brokenlegs for.
Yeah, two monthsbefore medical treatment.
(44:58):
Like those boneswould have. Started healing.
Probably. Fuzing. Yeah. Yeah.
That to be readybroken and reset and.
And to to like
start eating peopleand then still be like
okay, we've got to do somethinghere.
Like got to get out ofhere. But even that just the,
the mental drain on being around
(45:18):
that many dead bodies for thatamount of time, like I don't
you couldn'tget used to it or not.
You couldn'tget used to just having.
No, no.
And then the climb toget out of there like they show.
They show whatsome of the mountains around
look like in the footagethat I saw of the crash site.
And it's. It's intense.
What they had to climb liketo get over it
(45:39):
today with modern climbingequipment.
Would be dead. Nando.
Yeah. Was.
Torres, Nando and Roberto,everybody?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Gross story,but incredible story.
Incredible.
Like the guy on the horse.
I just
I'd love to get his reactionof when he got the message of.
(46:00):
Yeah, with it, like,
because he would have knownthe planet crashed.
He knew about it? Yeah.
He wouldn't rememberhearing about it. Yeah.
He's likegetting the message of, like,
Crap.
We saw you last night, and.
Yeah, I just went,got drunk and slept for 12.
Yeah, yeah.
All right, I can't.
I'm like,I would imagine that for them
seeing himand then he just leaves. Yeah.
(46:22):
He'd be like what.
Would that feel. Like.Yeah. Yeah.
They were week.
To I guess. 44kilos is not the way to man.
Should I I.
I weighedwhen I was ten years old.
I remember being in the 40s.Yeah, yeah.
And they had planes flying overlike on the first couple
of nights. Like,imagine that feeling.
How did they keep going?
Like a radio call.
(46:43):
The radio call would be just.
Yeah, like you'd give up.
Yeah, but they didn't know.
They didn't.And they survived. So. Yeah,
it's caps off to the,
Oh, man, you uncultured.
That's that's rough.
(47:04):
And on that horrific.
No riffic night, a riffic night.
I think it's time to saygood night.
Yes, it's.
Probably a night before thathorrific night.
I'm sorry for that, everyone.Sorry, chicken.
Right story, though, I thought.
Props to me.
So, to two turboprops.
2 to 3 propsthat stay in the anime.
(47:25):
Anyway.
Good nighteveryone. Don't eat your.
Friends. Take it easy.
Unless I give you permission to.
That's true.
You've been listeningto Cheeky Tales podcast.
If you'd like to seesupplemental images
related to our episodesor to interact
with us about our episodes,hit us up on at cheeky.
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You can
watch our episodes on YouTubeor listen to them on Spotify,
(47:48):
Apple Podcasts or whatever.You get your podcasts.
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