AFP Castaway flies out of Marshall Islands on way home <\/p>\n
Majuro (Marshall Islands) (AFP) - Castaway Jose Salvador Alvarenga flew out of the Marshall Islands Monday on his way home to El Salvador after an odyssey he says saw him drifting in the Pacific for 13 months. <\/p>\n
Alvarenga shook hands with Marshalls President Christopher Loeak in a brief ceremony at the airport before departing the island nation where he washed up 12 days ago with an amazing story of survival. <\/p>\n
\"Thank you for everything the people of the Marshall Islands have done for me during my stay,\" the 37-year-old fisherman said through an interpreter as Loeak placed a woven lei garland around his neck. <\/p>\n
Alvarenga will arrive in Hawaii in the early hours of Tuesday and then travel to San Salvador, most likely via the US West Coast, to be reunited with the family who had long thought he was dead. <\/p>\n
It will be a quicker and more comfortable journey across the Pacific than the 12,500-kilometre (8,000-mile) odyssey which began when a fishing trip off the Mexican coast went awry in late 2012. <\/p>\n
Alvarenga says he stayed alive in his seven-metre (24-foot) fibreglass boat on a diet of raw fish and bird flesh, with only turtle blood and his own urine to drink. <\/p>\n
He told AFP last week that his crewmate -- named as 24-year-old Ezequiel Cordoba -- could not stomach such foodstuffs and starved to death four months into the voyage. <\/p>\n
Officials have said his story checks out and survival experts concede living in such conditions is theoretically possible, supporting the veracity of what would be one of history's greatest maritime endurance feats. <\/p>\n
Alvarenga needed a green light from doctors to fly out of the Marshalls after suffering from ill-health in the wake of his ordeal, which ended when he was found disorientated and clad only in ragged underpants on a remote coral atoll. <\/p>\n
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Pacific castaway flies out of Marshall Islands<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" AFP Castaway flies out of Marshall Islands on way home Majuro (Marshall Islands) (AFP) - Castaway Jose Salvador Alvarenga flew out of the Marshall Islands Monday on his way home to El Salvador after an odyssey he says saw him drifting in the Pacific for 13 months. Alvarenga shook hands with Marshalls President Christopher Loeak in a brief ceremony at the airport before departing the island nation where he washed up 12 days ago with an amazing story of survival Continue reading