| CNN | - |
(CNN)
-- A mysterious castaway claiming to have been lost at sea for 13
months is now safely back on land, but many questions remain about how
he could have lived on his small boat for so long as it drifted across
the Pacific Ocean.
Castaway claims he drifted 13 months in Pacific
updated 1:41 PM EST, Mon February 3, 2014
Fisherman adrift at sea for 13 months
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Mexican government issues statement confirming his identity
- Castaway says he's Jose Ivan Alvarengo, 37
- Man says he lived off turtles and rainwater while adrift
- Companion died four weeks after pair left Mexico, Alvarengo says
The man calling himself
Jose Ivan Alvarengo turned up in a heavily damaged boat on a remote
coral atoll in the Marshall Islands, claiming that he had been living
off fish and turtles he had caught and relying on rainwater, and
sometimes his own urine, to drink.
Authorities are trying to
determine the veracity of Alvarengo's story. The Mexican government
issued a statement Monday confirming Alvarengo's identity and saying he
was an El Salvador national who was living in Tonala in Chiapas state.
Map: Drifter found in Pacific
He was found on sparsely
populated Ebon Atoll, a 22-hour boat ride from the capital of Majuro, on
Thursday. The southernmost of the Marshall Islands' atolls, Ebon has
only 2.2 square miles of land, one phone line and no Internet service.
The government airplane that services the atoll was not working, so
Alvarengo did not make it to Majuro until Monday morning.
Video from Majuro shows
Alvarengo walking a gangplank from a government boat to a waiting
ambulance. Waving to those gathered around the dock, he is supported by a
medical assistant as he walks. From inside the ambulance, he gives a
thumbs up before it drives away.
Alvarengo, who says he is 37, is now in a local hospital recovering from his ordeal, said U.S. Ambassador Tom Armbruster.
"He's in much better shape than one would expect after such an ordeal," Armbruster said.
In a hospital-bed interview with The Telegraph of London, Alvarengo told of how he hit land.
"I had just killed a bird to eat and saw some trees," he is quoted as saying.
"I cried, 'Oh, God.' I
got to land and had a mountain of sleep. In the morning, I woke up and
heard a rooster and saw chickens and saw a small house. I saw two native
women screaming and yelling. I didn't have any clothes; I was only in
my underwear, and they were ripped and torn," The Telegraph quotes
Alvarengo as saying.
People on the island
where he was found Thursday say the 26-foot fiberglass boat was in very
bad condition, covered in barnacles and with the carcasses of several
turtles littering the deck.
Alvarengo claims to have
set off from a port near the southwestern Mexican city of Tapachula,
about 140 miles south of where the Mexican government says he is from
and near the border with Guatemala, for what was supposed to be a
one-day expedition to catch sharks on December 21, 2012.
He claimed that he and a
teenage companion were blown off-course by northerly winds and then
caught in a storm, eventually losing use of their engines.
According to Anjenette
Kattil of the Marshall Islands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Alvarengo
said that four weeks into their drift, he lost the young man because he
refused to eat raw birds. There are no details on what Alvarengo did
with the young man's body.
Alvarengo told the Telegraph his companion's death had him contemplating suicide.
"For four days, I wanted
to kill myself. But I couldn't feel the desire; I didn't want to feel
the pain. I couldn't do it," he is quoted as saying.
Kattil said Alvarengo
worked for a company named Camaroneras de la Costa in Mexico. He has
told authorities that he is a citizen of El Salvador but has lived in
Mexico for the past 15 years and wishes to be repatriated back to
Mexico.
Armbruster, the U.S.
ambassador, said Alvarengo indicated that he had relatives living the
United States and U.S. officials would attempt to locate them.
Government officials
have been in contact with Mexico's ambassador to the Marshall Islands,
who is based in the Philippines, concerning Alvarengo in hopes he can
contact El Salvadoran authorities.
The Mexican Ministry of
Foreign Affairs issued a statement saying it has sent personnel from its
embassy in the Philippines "to learn directly about the case."
If Alvarengo's story
proves true, the trip across the Pacific would have taken him across
roughly 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometers) of open ocean before ending in
the Marshall Islands, about halfway between Hawaii and Australia, in the
northern Pacific.
Such an amazing journey
isn't unheard-of in the small Pacific nation, as three Mexican fishermen
made a similar drift voyage in 2006 that lasted nine months. Those men
lived off fish they caught and rainwater, and they read the Bible for
comfort.
Conditions in the
Pacific make the timeline of Alvarengo's journey plausible, according to
Judson Jones, a producer for CNN Weather.
Jones said the currents
between Mexico and the Marshall Islands would have carried a boat about
27 miles (42 kilometers) a day. That would mean the journey would take
about 208 days if the boat stayed in the current. But Jones said a
meandering journey in and out of the currents was most likely, making a
13-month journey believable.
CNN's Nick Parker and journalist Jack Niederthal contributed to this report.
end quote from:
No comments:
Post a Comment