Castaway lost at sea for 13 months mostly thought about tortillas, chicken, suicide
Jose Salvador Alvarenga said he survived on fish, turtles, birds and, out of desperation, urine.
HILARY HOSIA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Castaway Jose Salvador Alvarenga said he spent most of his 13 months adrift at sea thinking about chickens, tortillas and his family.
A castaway who says he survived 13 months at sea mostly thought about food, family and death.
Fisherman Jose Salvador Alvarenga told Agence France Presse Tuesday that he pushed the body of his fellow fisherman overboard after he starved to death — a moment that tested his own faith.
"I didn't want to die of starvation," he said through a Spanish interpreter at Majuro Hospital on the Marshall Islands — some 8,000 miles from where he’d set off in Mexico.
"There were times I would think about killing myself. But I was scared to do it," he added, raising his arm, pointing to heaven and declaring: “God! Faith!”
Alvarenga, 37, washed ashore on a remote coral atoll Thursday, disoriented and wearing only ragged underwear. Still, U.S. ambassador Thomas Armbruster said he was in remarkably good shape given that he said he survived on a diet of uncooked birds, turtles and fish.
"The hardest thing I had to do to survive was to drink my own urine," he told AFP, adding that he was forced to take the drastic measure during a period when “for three months it didn't rain.”
When it finally did, he used the hull of his dilapidated 24-foot fiberglass boat to store water.
GIFF JOHNSON/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Alvarenga is in remarkably good condition despite 13 months surviving off of birds, turtles, fish and, at times, his own urine.
He said he would often hear sea turtles bump his boat.
"I was able to reach over the side of the boat and grab them," he said. "I caught many turtles over the course of my drift."
Alvarenga, who is originally from El Salvador, said he had spent the last 15 years prior to his ill-fated fishing expedition catching sharks in Mexico.
His survival defies belief and has been met with a good deal of skepticism, including from Armbruster.
Yet at least some of his story adds up. Fishermen in the Mexican state of Chiapas told El Universal they knew of Alvarenga and had long thought him dead — a victim of a storm in late December 2012 that wrecked the engine of his boat.
“It’s a huge surprise — no one survives more than three or four years in those conditions, said Mexican fisherman Belarmino Rodriguez Solis. “We even placed flowers in the palm hut where he lived.”
If true, Alvarenga’s drift from the Mexican state of Chiapas to the Marshall Islands covered some 8,000 miles.
Fishermen in the area also said they knew of Alvarenga’s companion, aged between 15 to 18, and identified in different reports as Xiguel and Ezekiel, who died around four months into the voyage.
"He couldn't keep the raw food down and he kept vomiting," Alvarenga told the wire service. "I tried to get him to hold his nose and eat but he kept vomiting."
He eventually pushed the body into the ocean.
“What else could I do?” he said.
During the lonely months at sea his thoughts revolved around food.
“But then I woke up and all I see is the sun, sky and the sea,” he said. “My dream for over a year is to eat a tortilla, chicken and so many other types of food.
"I would imagine and dream a lot about my family — my mother and my father," he said.
The governments of Mexico and El Salvador say they are working together to bring him back home.
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