Travels in Latin America

I was flying into Cuzco, Peru over the Andes when our plane went through a cloud and, not seeing it coming, hit a glancing blow on a mountain, tearing off a wing. Our plane went spinning wildly through the air and came crashing down upside down twenty feet below in a huge snowbank at the edge of a cliff. When the dust cleared, I found myself hanging upside down from my seat belt, looking down at the ceiling. I blinked. Just then my seat belt ripped and I fell to the ceiling. I wasn't hurt, luckily. I sat up and heard groans from all around me. I stood up. the plane began to tip dangerously. I sat back down. I looked to my window. Luckily, it had shattered when we crashed. I carefully squeezed out of the window and onto the snowbank. The wind tugged at my ripped jacket as I stood up in the snow. A bit of goose down fluttered from one of its tears and disappeared in the swirling snow. I crawled back toward the plane, but instead of reentering, I crawled around it and looked over the cliff. I could see Machu Picchu in the distance, so close but so far away. I looked down over the cliff. there was a snowbank, but it was 30 feet below me. I hit the snow next to me in frustration- my biggest mistake. A torrent of snow twice my size, disturbed by my fist, came barreling down off the snowbank, smashing into me and sending me tumbling off the cliff. I was so caught up in the snow that it didn't feel like much when I hit the snowbank. When I realized where I was, I began to thrash violently. Luckily, I was facing upright and my head burst out of the snow. I breathed in deeply the cool, fresh air. I whipped out my cell phone and took a picture of the cliff I had just fallen off of and the tattered airplane. I clambered out onto the snowbank and stood up. I sunk waist deep in the snow. Suddenly, a small orange backpack fell to the ground beside me: a parachute. I looked up, and yelled in alarm. A second, this time, orange avalanche came cascading from the airplane on my head. Soon, I had dug myself out of this "parachute drift" and selected a parachute. Then I began to run toward Machu Picchu.