In October 1972 , a Uruguayan planer en path to Santiago , Chile from Montevideo crashed in the Andes . Of the 45 passenger on board , 25 survived the landing , but only 16 would make it out of the mountains alive . They exist for more than two month in frigid condition at a high height , in part by eating human frame . ( In 1993 , Ethan Hawke star inAlive , a film version of the storey . ) More than 30 years later , one of those survivor received an unexpected natural endowment : the pocketbook he lose .
In 2005,Ricardo Peña — a musician and mountain climber based in Colorado — trek to the crash site on hogback with a local guide . In the midst of the wreckage still strew across the tough terrain , he discovereda shredded coating . Inside the pouch , he found a wallet with the ID of subsister Eduardo Strauch , receipt , and Johnny Cash — both American dollar sign and Uruguayan pesos . He and his guide , Mario Perez , also found a used roll of motion-picture show , sunglasses , and a knife fashioned out of what seemed to be pliant from one of the plane ’s windows .
With the assist of the possessor of the hostel where Peña was staying in El Sosneado — the nearest village to the crash site — they were able to call Strauch in Montevideo . By conjunction , a week after Peña claver , another clangour subsister — Alvaro Mangino — came to the site , and was able-bodied to take the wallet and property to Strauch .
The discovery forged a deep friendly relationship between the mountaineer and the clangoring subsister . Peña and Strauch would later take on up in Mexico , and terminate up going into business together . The two have teamed up to leadtheir own tripsto the plane clang land site together each yearsince 2006 , called Andes Survivor despatch .
