Andes

Even if you've read the nonfiction best-seller Alive or seen the 1993 feature of the same name (with Ethan Hawke), or if you just know the remarkable story, the suspense in Stranded: I Have Come From a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains is still going to get to you. A quietly gripping documentary about the 1972 plane crash that left a team of Uruguayan rugby players on a snow-covered glacier in the Andes, Stranded combines archival...

An evening of music of the Andes on Friday will highlight the festivities planned to celebrate American Indian Day at the Rankokus Indian Reservation in Westampton Township. As part of a nationwide celebration to recognize the achievements of American Indians, Powhatan-Renape Indians of the Delaware Valley are inviting the public to the celebration. Fortaleza, a musical group comprised of Incas from the Andes of South America, will perform traditional and contemporary folk music of that region.

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - A turboprop plane carrying 22 people crashed and exploded in Argentina's southern Patagonia region, killing all aboard. Sol Lineas Aereas said Wednesday's Flight 5248, carrying three crew members and 19 passengers, including a baby, communicated an emergency while flying from Neuquen near the Andes to Comodoro Rivadavia along the coast of Patagonia. The company confirmed that the wreckage was found about 15 miles southwest of the town of Los Menucos and that local firefighters and police found no one alive.

In the bloody conflict between Peru's government and the Marxist guerillas of the Shining Path, the most dangerous place to be is on neutral ground. Because, as You Only Live Once delineates so brilliantly, there is no such thing. Set in a peasant village in the Andes where the beleagured inhabitants try to placate both sides, You Only Live Once is the deceptively simple tale of a gentle family imploding under impossible pressure after their daughter joins the Shining Path in a fit of sadly misplaced idealism.

The state agency overseeing city finances is scheduled to give city officials their first report card tomorrow, and the grade apparently will be much better than the agency's staff originally planned. After protests by the Rendell administration, the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority is toning down a caustic draft report that blistered city officials' progress in making the city fiscally solvent. The draft of the PICA analysts' report - obtained by the Daily News - shows that the authority's staff wanted to give an "F" to the administration for its efforts to cut costs and improve worker productivity to balance the city's budget.

Officials of a state authority overseeing city finances improperly interfered in contract talks Wednesday when they warned that delays could lead to mass layoffs, the president of the largest municipal union charged yesterday. "The PICA board has no business in our negotiations, and (vice chairman Charles) Andes has no business telling our members that they will be laid off," James Sutton, president of District Council 33, said at a news conference. PICA stands for the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority.

Five special U.S. drug agents died when a drug reconnaissance flight crashed in Peru's northeastern jungle, the Drug Enforcement Administration said yesterday. The twin-engine DEA transport plane was traveling on Saturday from Santa Lucia to Tocache when it lost contact with air traffic control, a DEA statement said. DEA officials in Peru said the wreckage was spotted yesterday afternoon near Puerto Pisana in the foothills of the Andes by satellite, but heavy rains prevented rescue workers from reaching the site, about 250 miles north of Lima.

Cannibalism. Heroism. The hand of God. These are terms used over and over to describe the epic survival struggle of the remnants of a Uruguayan college rugby team in the desolate, frigid high Andes more than 20 years ago. The most celebrated hero of the story believes all three terms are entirely too theatrical. It was only logical that the 16 survivors of the October 1972 plane crash should eat the flesh of some of their 29 dead fellow passengers to survive, said Fernando Parrado.

It was late afternoon six years ago in the Ecuadorean cloud forest - a damp, foggy land on the western slopes of the Andes of huge trees engulfed in moss - when suddenly the air was cut by the screech of a flock of birds. A dozen green parakeets with red crowns and red and blue patches on the wings wheeled through the forest and perched on a mossy branch. "There wasn't supposed to be any such bird there . . . and I had never seen any such bird anywhere. I knew I was onto something," said Robert Ridgely, an ornithologist at the Academy of Natural Sciences.

PERUVIAN WITCH DOCTORS WARD OFF BIRTH OF ANTICHRIST Peruvian witch doctors held a ritual at Lima's main maternity hospital to ward off the arrival of the Antichrist on yesterday's much-feared "6-6-6" date. Eight cloaked shamans from the Andes scattered petals around pregnant mothers, plunged knives into red devil dolls, and danced around skulls, snails, goats' feet and snake-skins to the astonishment of staff and patients. "Their chants and their loud maracas sounds annoyed the pregnant women a bit," said nurse Sania Patrol.

JACKSON, N.J. - Nestled in the forest in Jackson, just down the road from the local high school, a winding dirt lane led to a large fenced area where about 100 docile alpacas awaited their trip to the barn, a hub of activity this day. It was the annual shearing day at Alma Park Alpacas, during which the alpacas receive their spring haircuts before the warm summer weather sets in. Each alpaca yields between three and five pounds of fiber, which...

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - A turboprop plane carrying 22 people crashed and exploded in Argentina's southern Patagonia region, killing all aboard. Sol Lineas Aereas said Wednesday's Flight 5248, carrying three crew members and 19 passengers, including a baby, communicated an emergency while flying from Neuquen near the Andes to Comodoro Rivadavia along the coast of Patagonia. The company confirmed that the wreckage was found about 15 miles southwest of the town of Los Menucos and that local firefighters and police found no one alive.

ANOTHER GROUP has stepped forward to claim victimization by TV. Peruvians. And the show they're mad at is the show no one is mad at - "Modern Family. " The offending dialogue came during a recent argument between Jay ( Ed O'Neill ), and his Colombian wife Gloria, ( Sofia Vergara ). "Now, maybe in Colombia . . . " Jay begins. "Ah, here we go," Gloria interrupts. "Because, in Colombia, we trip over goats and we kill people in the street. Do you know how offensive that is?

It is my research partner's birthday, and I want to bake her a cake. Here in this small town in the Peruvian Andes, I am unsure how to begin - I have no electric oven to bake in, and certainly no Internet with which to search for a cake recipe. A growing international health nonprofit sent my partner and me to San Jose de Secce on a reconnaissance mission. We eat and sleep at the Medina family's hospedaje, where women huddle around the wood-burning stove with Se?ora Medina, gossiping and chewing coca leaves while the household band of cuy, or guinea pigs, run rampant at their feet.

Even if you've read the nonfiction best-seller Alive or seen the 1993 feature of the same name (with Ethan Hawke), or if you just know the remarkable story, the suspense in Stranded: I Have Come From a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains is still going to get to you. A quietly gripping documentary about the 1972 plane crash that left a team of Uruguayan rugby players on a snow-covered glacier in the Andes, Stranded combines archival...

Charles Andes, 75, a retired chief executive officer and chairman of the Franklin Mint and the Franklin Institute, died of vascular disease Thursday at his home in Haverford. "Chuck was one of those rare individuals who was . . . a dedicated civic leader, yet he never ran for office or took a public salary," said Joe Segel, a close friend who preceded him as chairman of the Franklin Mint. "Many Philadelphia institutions benefited greatly from his generosity and creativity," Segel said.

His name, improbably, was Dallas. Like many firsts, the moment was noteworthy but not exceptional. Scratch that. It was awful. Not the embrace, mind you, but the aftershock. The chronological distance between us turned out to be twice our assumptions. I thought he was 16, possibly 17. The problem was he thought I was, too. This was at an age when a grade represented an Andes in maturity and high school, a distant territory. To a gawky, completely uncool seventh grader, kissing a college boy was licentious.

For many years, one of my greatest desires was to visit Peru. In August, my dream came true. My husband and I embarked on a 17-day journey that included four days of horse trekking high in the Andes. The Andean horses are smaller than the ones we have ridden back home, and we found it quite comfortable to ride for two to three hours at a time. The first day we ambled up a beautiful mountain valley. The sun was warm, and snow-covered peaks towered above us. We passed herds of llamas and alpaca that were tended by Quechua people.

We had traveled here, to nearly the end of the world, to see penguins in the wild. It seemed an improbable sight in this vast, bone-dry expanse in Patagonia in the far reaches of South America, where sheep (pop. 2 million) outnumber people (pop. 150,000). But an hour later, we were not disappointed. At Seno Otway, or Otway Sound - 1,960 miles from Chile's capital, Santiago, and many more from Delaware County - dozens of tuxedos waddled our way. The colony of 3,000 Magellanic penguins nest in burrows along the sandy, mile-long trail at the edge of the lapis-colored Strait of Magellan.

Maria Rosado has traveled back to her native Chile summer after summer for nearly a decade to conduct archaeological digs and study the native culture. But the assistant professor of anthropology at Rowan University always thought something was missing: a contingent of her undgraduate students. After years of planning, Rosado was scheduled to depart Friday with her first team of three students, a Rowan alumna and Rosado's 16-year-old son, James, for a month-long academic stay in the coastal resort town La Serena, at the base of the Andes Mountains.