Motorcyclist Survives Four Months in Andes by Trapping Rats
OutdoorHub Reporters 09.09.13
A 58-year-old Uruguayan motorcyclist was found alive on Saturday after spending four months stranded in a remote section of the Andes Mountains. According to Reuters, Raul Fernando Gomez Circunegui disappeared in May during a trip from Chile to Argentina on a motorcycle. Disaster struck when his vehicle broke down and Gomez was forced to find shelter on foot.
The Andes is the longest continental mountain range in the world, and traversing its span is even more difficult during the region’s harsh winter months. Winter in the Andes occurs from June to August and can be devastatingly cold depending on elevation and location. Luckily, Gomez was able to locate one of the mountain shelters, or refugios, constructed for tourists visiting higher elevations. Gomez told the Diario de Cuyo that he survived by eating leftover rations at the shelter, as well as rats and raisins.
“The truth is that this is a miracle. We still can’t believe it,” San Juan Governor Jose Luis Gioja said after he met Gomez in the hospital. “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.'”
For months, Gomez relied on a homemade trap to catch rats that lived near the shelter, more than 9,000 feet above sea level. Supplies that had been left in the shelter were quickly used up, except for a portion of raisins which Gomez rationed throughout his stay. He was discovered and rescued when Argentinian officials visited the shelter to record snow levels. Doctors say that despite being malnourished and losing 44 pounds during his ordeal, Gomez is expected to be fine.
The Andes saw a more tragic tale of survival in 1972 when a Uruguayan rugby team’s plane crash landed in the mountain range. Due to injuries sustained from the crash, a lack of food, the death of the team physician, and harsh conditions, only 16 of the 45 passengers survived. Sheltered in the plane’s wreckage for two months, some of the survivors resorted to cannibalism to stay alive.
