Thirteen months adrift at sea in a tiny boat left Jose Salvador Alvarenga on the brink of madness and ready to die — then he spotted something that made him believe in miracles.
“I had just killed a bird to eat and saw some trees. I cried, ‘Oh, God!’ ” Alvarenga said, in his first interview since he washed up on a remote Pacific island last Thursday.
“[Then] I got to land and had a mountain of sleep. In the morning I woke up,” he told The Telegraph newspaper. “I saw a small house. I didn’t have any clothes — I was only in my underwear and they were ripped and torn.”
Alvarenga, 37, claims his ordeal began on Dec. 21, 2012, when he and a 15-year-old companion went shark fishing off the coast of Mexico and their engine broke down.
It’s a story that could be ripped from Hollywood — but some people are finding his tale a bit too compelling.
“I may have some doubts,” said Gee Bing, acting secretary of foreign affairs for the Marshall Islands, where Alvarenga washed ashore.
He noted that Alvarenga looked thin when he was found, but he could walk on his own and was not as emaciated as might be expected considering how little he had to eat or drink.
Bing said island officials are investigating Alvarenga’s story, which he told from his bedside in dramatic detail.
The El Salvador native said he survived on birds, fish, turtles and small sharks, which he caught with his bare hands.
He said he would drink anything but seawater, including his urine. The exposure and isolation eventually drove him to delirium.
“I didn’t know the hour, nor the day, nor the date,” he told the paper. “I only knew the sun and the night . . . I never saw land. Pure ocean, pure ocean. It was very placid — only two days with big waves.”
Alvarenga said that after days adrift, his teen companion, who was named Ezekiel, gave up hope, stopped eating and eventually died.
The loss devastated Alvarenga — a father of a 10-year-old daughter who had left his family in El Salvador to work as a fisherman in Mexico.
“For four days I wanted to kill myself,” he said. “But I couldn’t feel the desire — I didn’t want to feel the pain. I couldn’t do it.”
He said the only thing that kept him going was his religious faith. “I had my mind on God,” he said. “If I was going to die, I would be with God. So I wasn’t scared.
“I imagine this is an incredible story for people.”
Marshall Islands officials agree the story seems incredible and they are trying to contact family members.