Jose Salvador Alvarenga said he lived on raw birds and fish while drifting across the Pacific in a broken down boat.
The man from El Salvador who told officials he had spent 13 months in the Pacific adrift before his boat washed ashore in the Marshall Islands, returned to his homeland of El Salvador, but was too overwhelmed to speak about his experience.
Alvarenga arrived in El Salvador on Tuesday night on an aircraft that flew across the vast ocean he claims he traversed in his 24-foot fishing boat.
The boats engine failed on December 24, 2012 in a storm while he and his companion fished for sharks off the Mexico coast, where he had been living for nearly 15 years.
Without a radio or navigation equipment, the boat was pushed along the currents of the Pacific more than 6,500 miles before reaching the Marshall Islands.
Alvarenga said to survive he caught seabirds, fish and turtle to eat and he drank their blood.
He said his companion a Mexican national named Ezequiel Cordoba was unable to eat the raw animals and fish and subsequently died only a month after the two started drifting.
Authorities have met the story by Alvarenga with awe and some skepticism, but have not been able to find another explanation for how he just turned up on their island.
Journalists mobbed the man at the airport in El Salvador, which is located about 20 miles from the capital of San Salvador. Alvarenga was expected to give a comment to reporters but he was overcome with emotion. Reporters also were at the home of this family in Garita Palmera, which is on the Pacific coast of El Salvador about 60 miles from San Salvador.
Alvarenga originally flew to Hawaii then Los Angeles prior to landing in El Salvador. He appeared exhausted or overcome and was not able to make a comment, while he sat in a wheelchair that was surrounded with officials from Salvador.
Jaime Miranda, the Foreign Minister for El Salvador told the reporters than Alvarenga had been through a great deal in his journey in his drifting boat, but he had finally returned home.