Jose Salvador Alvarenga, Adift in Pacific for 13 Months Tells Own Story

Majuro, US Marshall Islands – Jose Salvador Alvarenga was found barely alive last week off the coast of the Ebon atoll aboard a vessel that had no outboard motor. He has now been moved to a local hospital to continue his recovery. He is now starting to tell his story. Apparently, he and a local teen set off for a fishing expedition to hunt sharks off the Pacific coast of Mexico. He recently told the Mexican Ambassador that he is from the city of Tonala, Chiapas, and that he set out for his fishing trip on December 21, 2012.

“I didn’t want to die of starvation,” he said through a Spanish interpreter at Majuro Hospital on the Marshall Islands.

“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!”

If his story is accurate, he will have traveled a distance of at least 6,500 miles and that presumes his trip was in a straight line. His survival on a diet of birds, fish, turtles, and turtle blood is all the more remarkable since the food was largely caught by hand. At the time he set out for the trip, his objective was to catch sharks to sell to a buyer at a price of $1.90 USD per lb. He was accompanied by a teenager called Ezekiel that was no more than 18-year-old. A sudden storm blew them off course and adrift at sea.

On The Web:
Jose Salvador Alv

arenga, Man Who Was Adrift For 13 Months, Says He Ate Birds And Turtles
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/03/jose-salvador-alvarenga_n_4718413.html