Castaway says dreams of family and food sustained him

A castaway who says he survived 13 months adrift in the Pacific said he thought about suicide but was sustained by dreams of eating his favourite food — tortillas — and reuniting with his family.

Fisherman Jose Salvador Alvarenga also described being forced to dump the body of his teenage companion overboard when he starved to death, but said his own strong religious faith helped as he drifted some 12,500 kilometres (8,000 miles) from Mexico to the Marshall Islands.

“I didn’t want to die of starvation,” he said through a Spanish interpreter at Majuro Hospital, where he is recuperating after being found disoriented last Thursday at a remote coral atoll.