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In the group, moreover, there were several children, including at least two babies.
Yolanda had left Venezuela about 15 days earlier, seeking to reunite with family members who migrated to Chile before her.
Her job as a cashier in the state of Táchira was not enough to support all the mouths that depended on her.
He traveled thousands of kilometers by bus until he reached Tacna, a city of more than 280,000 inhabitants in southern Peru, in which they increasingly fall more Venezuelan migrants seeking to reach Chile fleeing from the social emergency situation that the country is experiencing.
Due to the complications of the climate and the terrain, the migrants crossing the non-authorized crossings also face a area with mines that were laid during the regime de facto of Augusto Pinochet, tells BBC Mundo Gerardo Espíndola, mayor of Arica.
Espíndola recalls cases of migrants who have lost limbs when stepping on one of these devices that, although the Chilean State has made efforts to deactivate, it is not always easy to find.
Their final destination is not usually this city where it hardly ever rains, but other places in Chile.
But the quarantine that remains in force in the country has caused many migrants to be stranded and have to survive by begging in the streets.
“We saw desert and mountains everywhere”
The situation of the group when they were left alone on Saturday morning was already complicated.
“We were desperate because the water was already running out. We divide ourselves into three groups, “this young woman tells BBC Mundo by phone. Behind us you can hear the noise of children playing.
[Están ahora en una residencia sanitaria, donde fueron trasladados para ser examinados y pasar la cuarentena por el coronavirus.]They started walking again. In the afternoon, when they were crossing a hill, Yolanda felt that she couldn’t take it anymore.
“I stayed in the middle of the mountain, while my companions came to the top to drop off their bags so they could help me up.
“When we reach the top, what we saw was pure desert. We thought we would see something: a road, the sea, house lights.
“But what we saw was desert and mountains everywhere, all desolate.
“Our nerves began to attack, despair, because night was going to fall and we were there, without food. We no longer had a drop of water and we only had a can of tuna”, she says, still excited by the experience.
When he was there, in the middle of the desert, the only thing he thought about were his parents, who stayed in Venezuela, and the concern they would have when not hearing from them for so long.
The group had contacted the Chilean Carabineros for help, but they were in a place so difficult to access that neither the police nor the army had been able to find or reach them.
As night fell, the cold became “unbearable,” recalls Yolanda.
“We had to burn clothes, objects, to be able to bear the cold a bit. But the bonfire did not last lit. We tuck in each other. What worried us most were the children, “he says.
At dawn, the police officer with whom they were in contact told them that he saw them in the distance. “We were like three mountains from where he was.”
“Crying, desperate, asking God not to abandon us.”
No water or food
The policeman told them that it was impossible to get to where they were, that they had to get closer. They had been all Saturday afternoon, early morning and Sunday morning without tasting a drop of water and without eating anything.
Although they hardly had any strength, they began to walk again.
“If you saw, those mountains are infinite “, Yolanda says.
When they reached the foot of the last hill, they stood under a rock to give them shade.
They had already begun to hear the roar of the motorcycles that would be their salvation.
That morning, a group of motorcyclists from Team Tuareg, a team of adventure enthusiasts, had gone out like every weekend to take a trip through the desert.
They had previously encountered two other groups of lost migrants, who had alerted them that there were more. They gathered them together and notified the Army of the location so they could find them.
They had been shocked to see the migrants desperately asking for food and water, with “split lips, little red faces, and two babies,” Fuad Garrido, one of the motorcyclists, tells BBC Mundo.
“I was about to cry right there, really.”
After helping the first groups, a part of the bikers went out to look for the one who was left, in the most difficult place.
They skirted a steep hill and, below, “in a ravine where no one could imagine that they could be, there they were, under a stone, “recalls Garrido.
“The little children threw themselves on the ground,” says this motorcyclist, who admits that that day, when he got home in the afternoon, he broke down in tears.
“It was very strong,” says Freddy Lovera, another of the motorcyclists who participated in the rescue.
“Thank God we were able to rescue everyone, and that’s what matters.”
The rescued were about twenty, but the motorists say that there was no one left to take out of the desert.
No one knows for sure what happened to the rest of the initial group that left Peru. They probably managed to get there, but there is no official information.
Yolanda believes that the rescue was divine work.
“I wouldn’t tell him [que fue] luck, I would say a miracle of God. God sent these people to us at the right time and at the right time. Just a couple more hours and we really don’t count it. “
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