016- The Country of the Blind

Are you burned up at the high price of turkeys? Can't get eggs for your pumpkin pie? Want to get away from it all? We offer you escape. You're trapped in a remote valley of the Andes, walled in by sheer rock precipices.

And surrounding you, closing in on you, is a band of blind men who want your eyes. Escape produced and directed by William N. Robeson and carefully plotted to free you from the four walls of today for a half hour of high adventure.

Tonight we escape to the high mountains of Ecuador and to a remarkable world where sight is unknown as H. G. Wells imagined it in his curious story, the country of the blind. My name is Ibarra. I am a mining engineer in Quito, Ecuador, high in the towering Andes.

And up until a year ago, my chief sport was mountain climbing. My last climb was an attempt to scale the remote and forbidding peak of Periscotta Petal. The 20,000 foot crag, unconkered by man. It is unconquered still.

Three thousand feet from the icy summit. Our party turned back and fled for their lives. All of us escaped except one. A guide named Nunez, who slipped and fell over the precipice, disappearing into the vast chasm that yawned ten thousand feet beneath us.

The horror of that man's fall has haunted my dreams for a year. Because of it, I have forsaken Martin climbing for the rest of my life. And that decision still stands. Even though today I have seen Nunes, he was sitting on the steps of my shack when I arrived at the mine this morning.

At first I didn't recognize him, he was so much changed. I thought he was a ragged beggar asking alms. Is it you, Senor Ibarra? My name is Ibarayas, what do you want? You do not know me, Senor.