San Salvador: The Salvadoran castaway who says he spent 13 months adrift in the Pacific returned home in a wheelchair on Tuesday, but was too emotional to speak as his nation welcomed him back.
Shaking his head and waving at dozens of news cameras in El Salvador`s main airport, Jose Salvador Alvarenga muttered only a few inaudible words two weeks after washing ashore in the Marshall Islands.
Returning home after a two-day plane trip, the 37-year-old fisherman handed the microphone back to Foreign Minister Jaime Miranda before covering his eyes with one hand and being wheeled away by officials.
His story of survival captivated the world, earning skeptics but also believers, including officials and fishermen who say they searched for him after he disappeared off the coast of Mexico in late 2012.
Alvarenga says he survived a 12,500-kilometer (8,000-mile) odyssey in a seven-meter (24-foot) fiberglass boat by eating raw fish and birds while drinking turtle blood and his own urine when rainwater was lacking.
But a 24-year-old companion died four months into the ordeal, which ended when Alvarenga landed in an atoll on January 30.
"The story of Jose is a story of faith but also a story of struggle for life," Miranda said, adding that it was "a moment of much happiness for Salvadorans."
Sporting a new haircut and clean shaven, Alvarenga was expected to be taken to a hospital near San Salvador where doctors will decide when he can return to his village on the Pacific coast, a place he had left some 15 years ago.
His parents and 14-year-old daughter, Fatima, were not seen at the airport but they had decorated their home in Garita Palmera with blue balloons, palm leaves and a "Welcome Home" sign for his arrival.
They last saw him six years ago and believed he had died.
Alvarenga was living on Mexico`s southern coast when he says he went on the ill-fated shark-fishing trip in late 2012.
"He could have died. But thanks to God my cousin is a warrior, because I don`t know what would have happened to another person," said Marisol Alvarenga, 35, who came to the airport with another cousin to wait for his arrival.
"We are happy he is coming back after so much time," she said.
After a health setback delayed his departure from the Marshall Islands until Monday, officials took no chances and made Alvarenga undergo checkups before every flight.
He was given the all-clear in Hawaii and then in Los Angeles, allowing him to board a flight that landed in El Salvador around 8:00 pm local time (0200 GMT).
Officials said he was in a delicate state, with swollen feet but in stable condition.
The fisherman was in and out of hospital in the Marshall Islands, suffering from dehydration and a range of ailments including back pain, swollen joints and lethargy.
The International Organization for Migration paid for his return trip after the Salvadoran government requested help.
"I can`t comment on his medical condition because I`m not a doctor, but at the same time my feelings would be that what he`s going through psychologically are also incredibly strong challenges of adjustment," said IOM mission chief Delbert Field.
Alvarenga told AFP last week that his crewmate, 24-year-old Ezequiel Cordoba, could not stomach the unusual diet and starved to death.
Cordoba`s family in the southern Mexico state of Chiapas say they want Alvarenga to tell them what happened, though they do not blame him for his death.
Alvarenga`s miraculous story was met with some doubt when images first emerged of him with shaggy hair and a bushy beard, but looking plump.
But officials have said his story checks out, and survival experts concede living in such conditions is theoretically possible.
Fishermen in the Mexican village of Chocohuital backed up his story, saying they went looking for him when he disappeared in late 2012. They say pictures of his boat in the Marshall Islands confirm it is his.
