Mysteries remain in castaway’s story

No one in Mexico has come forward to identify man adrift for more than a year

LONDON — He has spent more than a year adrift in the Pacific, exposed to the elements in his tiny boat, alone after his friend died, and surviving on turtle blood and dead birds. Now Jose Ivan wants to go home.

“I want to get back to Mexico,” he told his interpreter, in his first contact with the outside world since December 2012. Jose Ivan, whose surname has not been disclosed, spoke to Magui Vaca, a Spanish translator based in the capital of the Marshall Islands, as he set off by ship on the 18-hour journey from the atoll of Ebon, where he landed, to the capital, Majuro. He was due to be met Monday by representatives from the Mexican embassy in Indonesia and a team of doctors.

“I feel bad,” the castaway told his translator. “I am so far away. I don’t know where I am or what happened.”

Details of his journey have been difficult to piece together. The single phone line to Ebon went out of service on Saturday and the island does not have the Internet — leaving radio as the only form of communication.

No one in Mexico has come forward to say that they know the missing man.

It was hoped that with his arrival in the capital, Jose Ivan’s story — with its clear parallels to the Tom Hanks film Cast Away — would be told in full, to an audience gripped by news of his survival.

All that is known is that on Thursday the emaciated man in ragged underpants was found on the atoll, where he had washed up in his sevenmetre Fibreglass boat. He spoke no English, and no one among the 700 islanders spoke Spanish.

With drawings and gestures he explained to the mayor, Ione deBrum, that he had set off from Mexico to El Salvador on a sharkfishing trip, but was carried away by currents. His colleague died during the ordeal, and Jose Ivan indicated he survived by eating turtles, birds and fish that he caught with

“I am so far away. I don’t know where I am or what happened.”

JOSE IVAN, WHO SURVIVED A YEAR AT SEA

his hands, and drinking turtle blood when there was no rain.

“We’ve been feeding him nutritious island food and he’s getting better,” said deBrum.

“He has pain in both knees so he cannot stand up by himself. Otherwise, he’s OK.”

Vaca added: “He feels a little desperate and he wants to get back to Mexico, but he doesn’t know how.”