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Tag: andes mountains

  • Andes Man: Survived on Rats, Raisins for 4 Months

    In a wonderfully inspiring story of survival, a motorcyclist from Uruguay got lost in the Andes Mountain snowstorms during the South American winter for over four months.

    Discovered by Argentine officials who choppered over 9,000 feet above sea level to measure precipitation levels, Raul Fernando Gomez Circunegui was rescued and taken to a hospital early this morning.

    The doctor who examined him was surprised that, despite “high blood pressure, a history of smoking and signs of undernourishment, he’s going to be fine and in a few days we’re going to discharge him.” He was also dehydrated.

    The AFP reports that Gomez was reported missing in May while travelling to Chile on his motorcycle. When the bike broke down, he tried to cross the Andes on foot. A heavy snowfall disoriented him, and around 12,000 feet he was lost. Searches were conducted and called off by July.

    Gomez survived by eating sugar, raisins he brought with him, and food he scavenged from mountain shelters; he supplemented his diet by eating rats he caught with a homemade trap. Though he made it through the ordeal, he lost 44 pounds.

    The governor of San Juan province in Argentina, Jose Luis Gioja, was quoted by Reuters as saying “the truth is that this is a miracle. We still can’t believe it… We let him talk to his wife, his mother and his daughter. … I asked him: ‘Are you a believer?’ He told me, ‘no, but now I am.’”

    The BBC and many other news outlets covering the story recall the famous 1972 plane crash involving the Uruguayan rugby team that survived by cannibalizing the frozen corpses of the dead passengers. In that instance, only sixteen of the 45 passengers survived, and they were only found after two of the survivors volunteered to trek through the snow.

    [Image via a beautiful BBC documentary on YouTube about the Andes]

  • Mashco-Piro Tribe Of Peru Makes Rare Appearance

    In the modern world it is easy to assume that everyone carries a cell phone and has access to things like the internet. After all, you are using it right now to read this story and when you opened your browser it was as uneventful as pouring a glass of water. It is easy to forget that there are still people in the world that leave in a primitive state that is not that far removed from our ancestors. Enter the Mashco-Piro people of Peru.

    The indigenous tribe, who live in voluntary isolation in the Eastern portion of Peru, made a rare appearance in the late June at a small river hamlet. It was only the second time since 2011 that the tribe attempted to make contact with outsiders. They asked for rope, machetes, and bananas, but their full intentions were unclear due to a language barrier that only allowed interpreters to understand portions of what they were saying.

    At times the encounter become hostile, with one tribesman even threatening to shoot his bow. It is unlikely that the tribe was angry at illegal logging and other operations that are taking place on their land.

    The Mashco-Piro are one of 15 “uncontacted” tribes living east of the Andes mountain range. In total those tribes are thought to number between 12,000 and 15,000 people, all of whom live exactly how their tribe did hundreds of years ago.

    The tribe making contact with individuals is just as shocking to the modern world as it is to them, a kind of mutual time travel with one group going forward and the other back. It is also extremely rare since contact with the tribes is forbidden by the Peruvian government for several reasons, one of which is their weaker immune systems that have not been subjected to many modern diseases.