It was going to be a short day of fishing, meters from the coast and in full view of everyone.
"We'll throw a few lines for a little while and I'll do the barbecue again," Antonio Manuel "Tony" Meza had promised his wife, who planned to celebrate her birthday in Monte Hermoso
that day, like every summer
.
The enjoyment of the mid-afternoon of Friday the 6th, in full sun and with the sea ironing,
was taking his kayak away from the shore
, to which he had invited Raúl Alejandro "Pato" Villegas, also a friend of his father-in-law, who arrived that same day to the spa from Santa Rosa.
In that distance and with no other fishermen in sight, the breakage of a plug in the bow of the boat put them at serious risk.
“As soon as we started paddling,
the kayak flipped over
.
We wanted to move forward and he threw us ”, Pato begins the story.
"Water had entered for about two hours and it was already too late to return," Tony adds from the moment
the first alarm
went off .
“We made signs towards the area of La Olla, from where we had left at 4 in the afternoon, but
nobody saw us
”, he adds.
The lack of answers and the lack of basic elements to communicate (they had agreed to leave their phones and the flashlight in their truck) ended up creating
a scenario of extreme emergency
.
And it prompted them to act.
With the styrofoam where they had lines and a plastic wrap, they managed to cover the hole.
"But after a while, he would fill up again and we had to go down to empty him, slowly, since he was full," says Tony.
How did they hold up?
“I crossed the oars and tied them so we could hang from them.
We were rotating ”, contributes Pato.
Thus and clinging to a life rope when they took the water out of the boat, they stayed afloat.
While the "brave" waves forced them to be attentive and
the day was fading
.
The spectacle of the sunset over the sea, which hundreds of people sit on the sand to enjoy or record with their phones, was
the irreversible countdown to a long and hard night
for the couple of friends from the Pampas .
“They are going to come looking for us and they are going to find us”
, they were already encouraged in the total darkness.
By 11 p.m., when it received the complaint, the Prefecture was tracking them with
jet skis that lacked lights
.
“We saw movement on the coast.
They came and went, even with our truck, but they didn't spot us,” laments Pato.
Duck, in a shirt, with Tony behind.
Go ahead, another friend, Mauro Andreani, key in the rescue.
The hope that they were going to be rescued lasted as long as the music from a show that, they guessed, was going on in the center of the spa.
“We listened to everything, but when it was over, everything was cut off and nothing else was heard:
for us, they weren't looking for us anymore
,” Tony admits.
They just had to wait and wait.
They agreed not to talk about their families anymore, about the children they have (two Tonys and three Patos), and
to concentrate on the exhausting task of staying afloat
.
"The hardest?
Between 4 and 6 in the morning.
Time didn't pass anymore and the cold was very ugly.
I didn't let you think.
We had to be underwater all the time and if we put our hands out to grab the oars, your fingers would freeze from the wind”, says Tony, still with an open and unhealed scar on his neck.
“Under the armpits the same, because there we leaned on the oars.
And every time I took off my vest in the sea,
the rubbing against my nipples made me cry
”, she points out.
Pato, on his right arm, can see a white spot, 15 by 10 centimeters.
It is the skin, parched and scorched, from leaning on the kayak, so as not to sink.
Beneath the boat, they linked their legs together and floated, aided by their life jackets.
“The wind stopped for only five minutes.
He didn't let us rest all night,” Pato points out.
Although they managed to remain calm during the
22 hours they were adrift
, at times despair threatened to push them to make hasty decisions.
“In the middle of the night, we saw a fishing boat moving forward and stopping.
We thought about aiming at it and swimming, but no, it was impossible”, admits Tony.
Later, during the day, they saw it again and there they decided to change their plans.
"We are a speck in the sea, that's why they don't see us," he told Pato.
I took off my vest, tied it to the kayak to see if it floated and with one paddling and the other holding onto the back, we could get close.
Until he told me that he had a cramp and couldn't take it anymore.
I told him that he was not going to give up, that he was not going to die there
.
I'm just married and I have a lot of plans.
For some nonsense, I'm not going to die.
I don't think this is for me, ”he asked her, in full uncertainty.
Tony in Monte Hermoso, with the key vest and oar in this survival story.
Photo Facundo Morales
“We kick forward.
We went, we went, but when we were in front of the center of Monte, the sea began to take us out, ”explains Pato, who trusted his friend Mauro Andreani to go to rescue them.
Those adverse weather conditions in the two hours before sunrise led them, at times, to stop kicking and moved them away from the coast.
“When dawn came, we saw that it had swept us away and
we were far from Monte
.
You could only see the Lighthouse (by the Recalada, two kilometers from the center) ”, reviews Tony.
Likewise, the light renewed their hope that the nightmare would end soon.
In the middle of the morning, they saw a plane that seemed to be aimed at them.
"Are they looking for us?" Pato doubted.
"Yeah, forget it.
I have been coming to Monte for 15 years and I have never seen a plane here”, Tony reassured him.
However, they got tired of signaling to him with their vests and raised oars, but he didn't see them, in the couple of passes the ship made over the sector where they were.
"In one, I saw the pilot's face
," says Pato.
After a while he stopped flying over them and the coast was further and further away.
It was there that
they launched towards the fishing vessel
that they had seen during the night and which they could not reach.
Although another fishing boat, one of the Monte craftsmen,
would be his lifeline
.
It was the Irene, from Vasco Enrique Carayeta, summoned by Andreani, who
paid the 75,000 pesos of fuel for the search and did not fail his friend
From him.
It was two in the afternoon on Saturday the 7th and they were already some 18 kilometers from the coast when they spotted them.
"They saw us, they saw us!" Pato exclaimed, but Tony did not believe him. "I thought we had to save ourselves because there was no one to find us. And what I wanted most was not to get caught another night," reminisce about the moments leading up to the rescue.
When they spotted them, he hung the vest on one of the oars and began to wave it until he heard "Come on, we'll find them!
It's them!", and thus the odyssey began to come to an end.
“After the birth of my children,
it was the greatest joy of my life
.
Those faces of the boys who found us, I don't forget them anymore”, Tony confides about the moment they already felt saved.
Tony says that he will return to the sea when his wife authorizes it.
Photo Facundo Morales
When they finally found them, they put them on the boat, hydrated them with towels soaked in fresh water and gave them fruits.
Later, they injected them with serum and took their blood pressure.
“I was perfect, but I felt like my legs weren't mine, from floating so much,” Tony recalls, enjoying his last hours in Monte Hermoso.
“He hit me badly and when I remember it, it makes me sick, because for a few hours I would not have been with my wife and my children.
It is a miracle and I will be grateful to the Basque Country and to the Prefecture for the rest of my life
”.
Not this summer, but later on, think about going back to the sea.
"
I'll go when my wife says so, because I was born again, on her birthday
," he says. "He's going to come back and he has to do it because he feels it, but when he does, he's going to have to take everything with him because not even a mirror they had to be seen.
The one above gave them another chance
, "says his father-in-law, from the front of the house where the family still spends a summer that they will not be able to erase from their memories.
Neither can Pato, who is still recovering from his injuries and shock in the tranquility of his home, in Toay, a few kilometers from Santa Rosa.
From there, he repeats the phrase that, like a mantra, he told his partner while they struggled to survive in the middle of the sea:
“We are going to tell this one, Tony”
.