La Paz, Bolivie (AP) – It was after their tiny plane crashed in the Bolivian jungle earlier this week that …
La Paz, Bolivie (AP) – It was after their tiny plane crashed in the Bolivian jungle earlier this week that their event really started.
After having crashed into the ground, the plane overturned in an infested lagoon of anacondas and alligators, plunging the pilot and four passengers – including a 6 -year -old boy – in 36 heartbreaking hours spent hanging on the wreck of the plane before being saved on Friday in the northeast of this Andean nation.
The doctor who treated the five survivors told the Associated Press on Saturday, all were aware and in a stable state, with only the aunt of a 37 -year -old boy. The others were released and recovered from dehydration, minor chemical burns, infected cuts, bruising and insect bites all over the body.
“We could not believe it, that they were not attacked and left for the dead,” said Dr. Luis Soruco, director of the hospital where the survivors were delivered to the tropical province of Bolivia Beni, said by phone after sending the pilot and two of the women at home with a solid antibiotic lesson.
The pilot, Pablo Andrés, 27, Velarde, emerged on Friday to tell the story that pierced many Bolivians – a news of new edifying news for a serious nation After years of a in economic spiral And political crisis.
“The mosquitoes would not let us sleep,” said Velarde to his hospital bed journalists in the provincial capital of Trinidad, where Dr. Soruco said he was surprisingly good health and spirits. “The alligators and the snakes looked at us all night, but they did not get closer.”
Shocked that the Caimans (pronounced Kay-Men), a species of the family of alligators from Central and South, did not shake them, Velarde assumed that it was the stench of the pouring jet fuel of the wreck which had maintained the reptiles predatory from a distance, although there is no scientific test which is an effective effective alligator.
Velarde said that the five of them had survived by eating ground cassava flour that one of the women had brought as a snack. They had nothing to drink – lagoon water was filled with gasoline.
The small plane had left on Wednesday from the Bolivian village of Baures, bound for the largest city in Trinidad further south, where Patricia Coria Guary had a medical record planned for her 6 -year -old nephew at the pediatric hospital, said Dr. Soruco. Two other women, neighbors of Baures aged 32 and 54, joined them.
Such flights are a form of current transport in this remote Amazon region carved with rivers. Strong rains wash the unpaved roads at this time of year.
But only 27 minutes – almost halfway – in the flight, the only engine of the plane cut. Velarde said that he had reported their imminent accident on a portable radio to a colleague.
He recalled in interviews with local media that he had scanned the vast emerald green canopy below him and aimed at a clearing near a lagoon.
“There was neither ranch nor route along the course,” he said. “It was just a marsh.”
Instead of slipping on the shore as expected, the plane crashed into the ground and turned upside down – injuring everyone on board and leaving Coria Guary with a particularly deep cut on her forehead – before splashing in the water.
“The landing was very tough,” said Velarde.
While the plane flooded, the five of them managed to climb above the fuselage, where they remained for two terrifying nights surrounded by Caimans and Anacondas and attacked by swarms of mosquitoes and other insects.
They agitated shirts and sheets in vain and shouted each time they heard the sound of the propellers or the tour of a boat engine. Friday, to the sound of approaching engine boats, “we started to shine our flashlights and to scream,” said Velarde.
A group of fishermen noticed it and helped them enter their canoe. They called the authorities and gave them to an army helicopter a few hours later.
“We could not have manipulated him one more night,” said Velarde.
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Debre reported in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
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