True Crime Campfire - Lost: The Story of Salvador Alvarenga

Episode Date: February 6, 2026

In a lot of ways, the world is smaller now than it ever has been. With a few clicks of the mouse, I can watch a live camera feed of Sydney harbor, or read a newspaper from any country I can think of. Just five hours in an airplane can get you from the US to Europe, and pretty much anyone on the planet can listen to a couple of nerds like us on a podcast. But, obviously, the world is not in fact shrinking. It is still just as vast and potentially perilous as it was in the days when no one knew what lay on the other side of the ocean, and all it takes to bring that home is to lose connection to our world of technology and information. Our story is about a man’s unimaginable journey through the ocean wilderness, driven by nothing but his wits and his will to survive.*Registration is now open for CrimeWave 2.0! Visit crimewaveatsea.com/CAMPFIRE to get your discount code for $100 off your cabin and a private meet-and-greet with us! The cruise is Feb. 8-12, 2027.Sources:Jonathan Franklin, “438 Days”Time Magazine: https://time.com/4154458/castaway-sued-cannibalism-allegations/The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/04/castaway-story-backing-from-mexicanFollow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/truecrimecampfire/?hl=enTwitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers, grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. In a lot of ways, the world is smaller now than it ever has been. With a few clicks of the mouse, I can watch a live camera feed of Sydney Harbor or region newspaper from any country I can think of.

Just five hours in an airplane can get you from the U.S. to you. Europe and pretty much anyone on the planet can listen to a couple of nerds like us on a podcast. But obviously, the world is not, in fact, shrinking. It's still just as vast and potentially perilous as it was in the days when no one knew what lay on the other side of the ocean. And all it takes to bring that home is to lose connection to our world of technology and information. Our story is about a man's unimaginable journey through the ocean wilderness, driven by nothing

but his wits and his will to survive. This is Lost, the story of Salvador Alarenga. So, campers, we're starting this one in 2012 in the fishing village of Costa Azul on the Pacific coast of southern Mexico. Costa Azul sits on a peaceful lagoon with mangrove forests and cornfields behind it. There's a slowly growing tourism economy, but the engine that drives Costa Azul has always been fishing. You can catch some small fish in the lagoon as long as you steer clear of the crocodiles, but if you want to make a living at it, you have to go out to sea. This was dangerous work. Fishermen went out on little two-man boats, 25 feet long, simple fiberglass shells with an outboard motor and an icebox the size of a refrigerator on its side. They often went out for more

than a day at a time. Salvador Alvarenga's boat was typical for a trip like this. It took two hours to load it with 70 gallons of gasoline, 16 gallons of water, 100 pounds of sardines to use as bait, a harpoon, three knives, miles of line, hundreds of hooks, and three bailing buckets. He also had a cell phone, a GPS tracker, a radio, a wrench set, and 200 pounds of ice. On a good day, he could come back with 1,500 pounds of fish in his icebox, make enough money to live large for a week.

In Costa Azul, this meant beach parties with endless grilled fish, coronas, and tequila, while smoking joints the size of traffic cones and complaining about how few single women there were in town. Salvador lived in one room and owned almost nothing. This was just a hair above subsistence living, but it was a full life. Salvador had been in Costa Azul for four years. He'd walked there, almost 300 miles north along the coast. from his home in El Salvador. Back there, he'd gotten into a bar fight that ended with him getting 11 stab wounds,

three broken ribs, and a concussion. He woke up in the hospital with barely any clue what had happened to him. Somewhat miraculously, he went back to his little coastal hometown just three weeks later and discovered that one of the guys who attacked him had had his throat cut. Salvador Alvarenga had nothing to do with it, but word was out that the guy's buddies were after him. So he split, leaving his parents, his girlfriend, and a teenage daughter he'd barely seen since she was born. He'd been a fisherman since he was a teenager himself, and as soon as he saw Costa Azul, he thought it looked like somewhere he could fit in.

Small blue-collar towns are not always the most welcoming to outsiders, but it didn't take long for Salvador to find a place there. He was an optimistic guy with a good sense of humor. He was strong and worked hard, and his scareback in El Salvador meant he limited his partying to beach parties. parties with people he knew rather than tearing it up in the local cantonas. And he knew his shit. He was soon employed as the captain of one of the little two-man boats, where he'd motor out to the dangerous deep waters 100 miles offshore and fish for tuna, Marlin, Maki-Mahi, and Hammerhead and Thresher Sharks. On the evening of Thursday, November 15, 2012, the fishermen were having a beach party, although a low-key one, just lazing on hammocks and drinking. That sounds so awesome right now in the middle of all this snow, doesn't it?

They'd all had a hugely successful day and planned to get right back out there the next morning before a northern storm moved in. A convoy of 10 went out after breakfast, slicing their narrow boats out of the calm lagoon and onto the big rolling waves of the Pacific. They went out together for five minutes, then idled their engines.

This was an old tradition before they really got to work, where they just sit there, shouting jokes, and gossip back and forth for as long as it took to smoke a couple joints. After that, they split up and headed out into the deep ocean. Salvador's mate was a skinny 20-something called Ray Perez. On shore, Ray was a wild law-breaking lunatic, but out at sea, he was solid as a rock, which is an archetype that's probably familiar to anybody who grew up in a coastal town. Like, you all know this guy. He and Salvador were good friends. They motored out for six hours to the spot they'd had such success the day before,

and spent a couple more hours baiting their hooks and laying out the line. And then they waited, talking and smoking and checking the engine. It had had some trouble a few days before, but seemed to be working all right now. They weren't scared of the engine dying. There were always other fishermen not far away, and it would just take a radio call to get them to come and tow them in. At 2 a.m. they started to pull in the line. It was another huge hall, Mahimahi, a sailfish, a thresher shark, and a hammerhead.

As the line pulled the fish to the side of the boat, Ray clubbed them to death, then hauled them into the icebox. It was important to make sure they were dead first. They knew plenty of fishermen who'd lost fingers or toes to a shark bite. With one cast of their line, they'd filled up the ice box with maybe 1,200 pounds of fish. They headed back to shore. If they were quick and unloading and restocking the boat, they could get out again for one last hall before the storm blew in, which would put them at nearly 60 hours of continuous work. But that last trip wouldn't include Ray Perez.

When they got to shore, he announced that he had to hurry to the local courthouse 10 miles inland to sign probation papers for an armed robbery conviction. He helped load the boat for the next trip and promise to be back by noon. But Salvador was impatient. It was rare to find a spot as rich as the one they'd fished the last two days, and he didn't want to let that bounty slip away. He asked around for a spare hand to go out to sea with him. Side note, this was a nickname-intensive,

part of the world. He spoke to his buddy El Ambre Lobo, the wolfman, who set him up with a 22-year-old kid named Ezekiel Cordoba, more commonly known as Pignada. Salvador only knew him as the star of the village soccer team, and he knew he was far from ideal. Cordova was comfortable on the calm waters of the lagoon, but only had a sliver of deep-sea experience and had never been in trouble out there. But the clock was ticking. The storm from the was coming closer by the minute. At this point, Salvador was also past 30 hours of constant activity with no sleep, which is not the best situation for calm decision-making. Cordoba begged and pleaded for the gig. The deep-water shark boats were the elite of the fishing community,

and this was his chance to break in. Finally, Salvador agreed, and they set out with nine other boats. Salvador's own nickname was Chancho, Piggy, both because he'd eat anything that was wasn't nailed down and because his skin was much paler and more pink than most other people in Chiapas, which is the Mexican state with the most indigenous people. So to protect against sunburn, when he went out fishing, he wore a black ski mask to protect his face from the tropical sun, with the other fishermen laughing and yelling out, La Terrorista. Spanish speakers, by the way, why the hell is terrorist feminine? I don't know. I don't get it. Like, I mean, obviously, I'm sure they're lady terrorists, but, you. You know, we haven't fully broken through that glass ceiling. So they're mostly men.

Yeah, I was going to say it's a primarily male gig. Yeah. Yeah, I don't understand the gendered noun thing going on in romance languages. It's weird. It always tripped me up. I took French and Spanish classes and it always fucked me up. I can't do it. So this thin boat rode out to sea with Cardoba leaning out over the proud to watch out for submerged tree trunks and other

debris that could flip them over. The wind was picking up, and with it, the waves got bigger, the little boat rising and falling with them. After the first hour, Cordova got seasick, puking and dry heaving over the rail. Oh, God, dry heaving is the worst thing in the world, and I know whereof I speak is I had stomach flu about a month ago. Oh, that was the worst part, like bar not. After five hours, they reached the fishing spot and spooled out the hooked line. Every 20 yards, an empty plastic bottle was tied to the line to keep it afloat, and when it was all out, the drag created a sea anchor that kept them from being pushed around by the waves. Now they just had to wait. The sunset. Cordoba fell asleep. Salvador smoked and watched the line. The wind got stronger and

stronger, but carried no rain, as was usual for a northern storm, a Norteno. By 1 a.m., the wind was howling and the swelling waves tipped the boat back and forth. Cordoba started started to panic, yelling, let's go back, we're going to die. Salvatore told him to shut up, but the waves and wind were filling the boat with water. He and Cordoba switched between bailing water out of the boat and pulling in the line yard by yard as the boat moved crazily on the wild sea. By the time the line was half in, it was already a fantastic catch, 10 fish, tuna, Mahi-Mahi, and sharks, and Salvador decided it was enough. He took out his fishing knife and cut the line. Without the drag of the line, the boat was tossed this way and that on the waves.

Cordova started crying. Salvador shone his flashlight onto his compass and headed east into the storm, dreaming of beer and chicken and a week-long party while he and the other fishermen waited out the storm. Salvador was at the helm, while Cordova frantically bailed water in the darkness. The boat rose high on the waves and slid down the other side while 50-mile-an-hour winds blew into their faces. They put out another line with floating bottles to act as an anchor, but still the boat was thrown around like a pinball. Cordoba started falling apart, sometimes giving up bailing to sob and scream about being eaten by sharks, his poor kid. Salvador thought they were between four and six hours from the shore.

Cordova didn't have the experience to be able to ride the motion of the boat and was thrown around, bruising himself badly. He screamed, Why is God punishing me? One time Salvador had to pull him out of the icebox where he'd hidden, half frozen from the storm on top of the shark carcasses. Around 9 a.m., Salvador spotted mountains on the horizon. They were maybe 20 miles from shore, and the Yamaha motor started coughing. It wasn't failing, not yet, but it was clearly having problems. When they were 15 miles from shore, it started dying. Salvador cut the engine and did a quick tune-up.

He wasn't a mechanic, but he pulled and cleaned the spark plugs and checked the gas line, and he yanked the cord to start the engine again. Nothing. He pulled again and again, but there was no life in the engine at all. He pulled until his fingers started bleeding, and the cord snapped. He got on the radio and called his boss. Willie, the motors ruined. His GPS had gotten wet and ruined, so he couldn't give cord,

but knowing his distance from the shore would give other boats a chance to find and rescue him. Come on now, I'm really getting fucked out here, Salvador yelled over the wind. Without any forward motion, the boat was tossed around by the waves much more severely. Salvador realized they were too low in the water. They needed to lighten the boat. So they started throwing their precious catch overboard. This was dangerous. Some of those tuna and sharks weighed like 75 pounds, so they had to let go with a rail and use both hands and grab them together to toss them overboard. They risk going overboard themselves and knew that the blood from the discarded catch would attract sharks. It took an hour to get all the fish overboard. Then they

tossed the ice and extra gasoline. The batteries on the radio died. Now they couldn't contact any would-be rescuers. And that was a dwindling hope anyway. The crazy motion of the boat disguised it, but the wind and the currents were pulling them northwest and out to sea much faster than they would have thought possible. Fishing boats in a coast guard plane had in fact come out to try to rescue them, but were forced back by the terrible storm. Around noon, a huge wave swamped them, washing out their food and fresh water and throwing Cordova overboard. He grabbed a railing and screamed, submerged almost to his neck, until Salvador grabbed him by his hair and pulled him back on board. It was like landing a big fish, he said later. They bailed all day.

When the sunset, the wind cut through their wet skin like blades of ice. They turned the icebox upside down and huddled together inside it, one of them going out every now and again for a 15-minute stint of bailing. And that was life for the next five days as the storm raged. When the winds calmed and the waves gentled, Salvador and Cordoba were nearly 300 miles, from the shore. The storm had washed almost everything overboard. They had a wooden plank, a gray bucket they kept changes of clothes in, a fishing knife and machete, a wooden club,

the empty icebox in its lid, some empty bleach bottles they'd used as floats, some nylon rope, the useless outboard motor, and one red onion that had been wedged under one of the seats. That was it. The boat had, until now, just been named Shrimper from the Coast No. 3, But with grim humor, Salvador now renamed it Titanic. The storm had chilled them to the bone for days. Now, as the tropical sun rose on a calm day, they laid the plank between two benches, stripped to their underwear, and basked in the sun like lizards.

They were both exhausted. They stretched out beside each other on the plank, heads beside feet, and slept. When they woke up, the immediate peril of their situation was obvious. They were both painfully thirsty. sea. Coconuts drifted by, sometimes a whole bunch of them. It would take maybe a minute to swim out, grab them, and get back to the boat. Salvador was an excellent swimmer, but he had heard horror stories all his life about fishermen being eaten by sharks. His old boss, Captain Gio, had been

thrown overboard when his boat hit a log. And by the time the mate had gotten the boat turned around, there was nothing but a pool of blood and a frenzy of fins. Oh my God. Fish, including sharks often gather under floating objects like logs, or small boats drifting at sea. Salvador stayed in the boat and hoped a coconut would drift close enough to grab. They felt both relieved to be out of the nightmare of the storm and a growing foreboding about their situation. Cordoba was never far from despair. He'd say, we're going to die, we're going to die, and break into sobs. Salvador tried to make the idea sound ridiculous. What are you talking about? Of course we're not going to die.

Oh, God, this poor kid. And poor Salvador, too, like having to hold him together. Both of those are awful. Like, they were both going through it. Yeah. The ocean currents took them steadily west, 75 miles a day into the deep, empty heart of the Pacific. There were no clouds in the sky and the sun beat down. They turned the icebox onto its side to give them some shade. And without fresh water, they were drying up. That's a problem that affects everything else in the human body.

It makes you lethargic and dulls your thinking. By the eighth day after the motor died, Salvador and Cordoba were drinking their own urine. But they had at least found a small supply of food. A kind of seaw moss was growing on the bottom of the boat, and it attracted palm-sized triggerfish to come and gnaw on it. Salvador leaned over the side of the boat with his arms and the water up to his shoulders, hands about 10 inches apart. He waited, perfectly still, until a fish swam between his hands,

and he clapped them together, digging his fingernails into the scales. Lots of them got away, but Salvador got good at grabbing them and flipping the fish over to Cordoba, who cleaned them and sliced the meat and strips the size of a finger, which they dried in the sun before eating. The triggerfish had sharp teeth and nipped tiny chunks out of Salvador's palms, but that didn't stop him. When Cordoba dumped the fish guts into the water, four-foot Mako and blue sharks arrived within minutes. They were hundreds of miles from dry land, but they passed plenty of human garbage out there.

How depressing is that? They collected every empty water or soda bottle they could find. There was an indentation in the boat's fiberglass body that they cleaned the salt from. If it rained, water would gather there and they could fill the bottles, but there was no rain yet. Salvador and Cordoba divided the halves of the boat with an imaginary line, and every morning they would lick the fiberglass to try to find a few drops of dew. On the 10th day, the first turtle arrived. Sea turtles apparently like to rest on floating objects, especially if they've just dived deep into the cold water and need to warm up. It's not unusual for turtles to swim towards

small fishing boats and try to climb on board, and that was what happened in the middle of the night. Salvador was woken by a thump and climbed out of the icebox, worried that the boat had hit a log. He saw two bright eyes looking at him from the side of the boat. It was a two-foot-long turtle. Salvador grabbed it and threw it down into the boat, then snatched up his knife and killed it. Both of these men had grown up poor, but Salvador had been hungry a lot more often than Cordoba, had had to hunt to survive, and wasn't squeamish at all. He started gulping down as much of the turtle's fresh bulls.

as he could. And this is the part right here where I'm like, I would not be able to do this. I do not think I could do that because it is so gross. I can't, I mean, I can barely even read that sentence. But I respect a shit out of him for this. Like, you know, he's going to do what he has to do, right? Mm-hmm. He tried to get Cordoba to drink the blood too, but even as thirsty as he was, Cordoba wouldn't. It's a sin, he said. I can't. That's strange. Why is it a sin? Drinking blood in general? I don't know. When the sun came up, Salvador

butchered the turtle and laid out strips of meat to dry in the sun, but his hunger overcame him and he ate it essentially raw. Cordoba wouldn't do that either, but they took the cover off the outboard motor to reveal some bare metal, and when the sun heated that up, they could warm the turtle meat. Salvador used the turtle's shell as a plate to serve the meat on and soon enticed Cordoba to eat. They quickly became expert at snatching them out of the water

if they got close to the boat. Out here in the deep ocean, a turtle had no reason to worry when approaching what looked like a random piece of flotsam and was an easy target. Sad, I love sea turtles. On the 13th day, there was a storm, and they finally got to feel fresh water on their skin for the first time in two weeks. They collected the water in their rescued bottles and their one bucket, scooping up handful after handful to drink. Then they slowed down and concentrating on saving as much of the water as they could. It might be weeks before it rained again. Their malnourished bodies weren't great at regulating temperature,

so as the rain soaked their clothes, they were soon shivering and cold and huddled together in the icebox for warmth as the growing waves lifted and dropped the boat. The storm lasted almost all day. By the end, their five-gallon bucket and many plastic bottles were full of fresh water. They were safe from immediate starvation

and got even more food when a pack of sharks attacked the fish that gathered under the boat, thrashing the water in a frenzy. The fish swam close to the boat for shelter, and Salvador just scooped them up in his hands, watching out for the sharks, which banged and crashed against the side of the boat. Cordoba was terrified. Salvador yelled at the sharks, threatening them. Someday we're coming back for you. All this torture you're causing us, we'll be back.

He also yelled at the failed outboard motor and beat it with branches they'd found in the ocean. And man, this is some big. me energy right here. Yes. I yell at inanimate objects on a daily basis. I have threatened to bash my laptop into smithereens a thousand times, and a lot of times it actually works like I really think it works sometimes. It understands. I'm actually surprised the motor didn't just leap back into life. But then he felt bad and apologized, asked for forgiveness from the motor and took it apart, looking for metal to try and make hooks. He took out a strip of metal about as long as he his forearm and over the course of half a day bent it over the rail into a hooked j shape,

then laboriously scraped it against the propeller blade to get a sharp tip. He'd catch the little triggerfish and cut them up, chumming the water with blood and bits of meat. Then he leaned over the side, one hand holding the hook deep in the water and kept as still as possible. He waited until a two-foot Mahi-mahi swam right over the hook, then yanked up the hook and tossed the fish into the boat, where Cordova smashed it in the head with a propeller blade. This was a feast. If you live in a town of any size, there's probably a restaurant serving Mahi-Mahi, maybe even raw sushi or stevece. But Cordova and Salvador divided the fish way more thoroughly than a chef would, saving every tiny scrap of meat. Their individual portions included one kidney and

one eyeball, and if your stomach turned a little bit at that, apparently the eyeballs of fish have like a ton of vitamin C. So if you're ever lost at sea, remember to eat the eyeballs. Just imagine they're really bad grapes. And I apologize for having to tell you that. I need a second, too, after that. Just breathe through your nose. But yeah, I mean, if you want to avoid scurvy, eat the eyeballs.

Salvador managed to land another mahi-mahi, but those fish are basically all muscle. And the third one twisted free and pulled the hook from his hand. And both fish and hook disappeared into the dark blueness below. Oh, dang. I know. He worked so hard on it. By the 28th day, their rainwater was gone,

and they were back to living on meager strips of triggerfish. They were becoming gaunt, their skin taking on a stretched look. Extended dehydration decreases blood volume, which means everywhere in the body receives less oxygen, including the brain. It can make you strange. Cardoba started losing it. He'd beg Salvador.

Orangees. Bring me oranges. Salvador learned that he could calm Cordoba down by playing along. Okay, I'm going to the store. He'd walk past Cordoba to the other end of the boat and wait five minutes, then come back and say the store was closed, but he'd go back soon and return with oranges, shrimp, tamales, and fresh tortillas. Cordoba would stop pleading and go to sleep.

Oh, man. Seabirds landed on the boats occasionally. Salvador tried to rush and grab them, but they were always too fast. I stopped and tried to figure it out, he said later. How do you catch a bird? I told myself, think like a cat. He would crouch flat and wait for a bird to land, and then just stay still for long minutes until it started to relax. When the bird started cleaning its plumage, he'd inch forward, never looking directly at it, freezing when it looked his way. Finally, when he was close enough, he snatched.

his hand forward and grabbed its foot. The first one got away, slashing his knuckles with its beak much more painfully than he'd expected. Oh yeah, seagulls will fuck you up. Okay, I used to live in a place where they would swoop down and steal your food if you went for a walk on the boardwalk. And one time I had like some French fries or like a corn dog or something. And I got dive bombed and got a big old gash from one of their talons. I don't think it was the beak. I think it was one of their feet. Man, I was like, oh my God, am I going to catch? something, it was really traumatic.

It bled so much. I just wanted my corn dog. The next few flew off before he could get a hold of them, but eventually he managed to grab one by the foot and ignored the pain from its beak until he could break its neck. He filleted it like a chicken, but there wasn't much meat in its skinny body. He cut a few thin strips of meat, dribbled seawater on them for a touch of salt, and let the sun warm the meat. It was still raw meat, though. Salvador popped them in and shewed them, no problem, but Cordoba sniffed the meat first, which was a mistake. The seabird's flesh smelled like fish

that had gone bad. He refused to eat it until four days later when Salvador caught another bird and hunger overcame his squeamishness. He liked it. They were soon both adept at stalking birds like cats. On the 36th day, which they estimated was Christmas Eve, they had a feast. Four birds sliced and diced to share between them. To make sure their meals were equitable, one man would prepare two portions and the other would choose which one he wanted. But Cordoba was the only one who got sick, suddenly clutching his stomach in pain. He threw up again and again for hours until the sickness subsided. They found the remains of a dangerous sea snake in the bird's gut and thought that might be the cause, but as far as I know, eating venomous snakes doesn't

poison you. I mean, they were eating the raw meat of wild birds. One of them getting sick wasn't exactly bizarre. I'm actually surprised it hadn't already happened. I'm surprised it didn't happen more, yeah. Yeah. But after that, Cordoba refused to eat any of the birds. And in his more panicky moments, he accused Salvador of trying to poison him, which made no

sense at all. Salvador had started out much stronger than Cordoba, and because he'd been more willing to eat weird stuff, he'd retained more mass. If he wanted to murder his shipmate, there were a lot easier and more direct ways to do it. It wasn't like there were witnesses out there, but neither of their brains was operating at peak efficiency, especially Cordoba's. This poor kid, it just absolutely breaks my heart. By the 45th day, they were 1,500 miles from the Mexican coast and had entered the part of the Pacific called the doldrums, where in the days of sail, ships sometimes drifted for weeks without the slightest breeze. They were moving at maybe one mile per hour. This is also one of the wettest places on earth, slammed by quick violent storms.

When the first one hit, the rain pelted down as the waves swelled. Salvador and Cordoba were used to this and set to frantically bailing out seawater while trying to gather as much rainwater as they could. Then Cordoba looked astonished and pointed. 400 yards away, a water spout erupted, a tornado swirl sucking water and fish up into the sky. It only lasted a few minutes before fading out, but a second and a third screamed into life on either side of them soon after, both equally brief but terrifying. The storm lasted five days, with Salvador and Cordoba only taking brief breaks from bailing to eat damp strips of fish and snatch a few minutes of sleep. For once, they drank as much water as they wanted.

By day 76, they were 2,100 miles from home, approximately the distance from San Francisco to Hawaii. They were on a near-starvation diet, broken only by occasional lucky encounters with a turtle, but they'd found a weird kind of peace appreciating the beauty of the ocean around them. They talked about their paths, talking about their mothers and how they'd disappointed them. At night they looked up at the stars and invented constellations.

Cordova, a former choir boy, would sit and sing hymns in the icebox because it had good acoustics. Salvador, who didn't know the words, would hum along outside and come in big for the choruses. How incredible is this, y'all? Like, the way the human spirit can just keep itself alive somehow in the worst kind of deprivation, it's the worst kind of danger. There's so much bad in us, but I just think this is absolutely beautiful. Yeah, human resilience is one of the most incredible thing about us. Like, if aliens were to come down tomorrow and ask me for one thing humanity can be proud of, it would be that. Like singing in the darkness, looking to each other for comfort, it's, it's amazing. Yeah. Salvador didn't go to church, and his attitude toward the Catholic church

shifted between indifference and antagonism. But he did believe in some kind of higher power and was careful to never make fun of God out of fear of divine retribution. He had tattoos of Santamuerte, the skeletal lady of holy death, running up both arms, with bony hands clasped together on his back. Despite condemnation from the Catholic Church, devotion to Santamuerte was growing rapidly across Latin America. Maybe Salvador wore it to show his rejection of traditional Catholicism. Maybe he just wore it because he thought an incarnation of death as a skeleton lady in robes looked cool, which it obviously does.

His main approach to life was relentless optimism. Only in the darkest hours did he seriously doubt that he wouldn't survive this experience at sea. Cordoba wasn't so lucky to be a glass half-full kind of guy like Salvador. Even when he seemed at peace, it came with a morbid certainty that he was going to die, and that often spun him down into depression. He kept repeating, I'm going to die, I'm going to die. and would confess all his sins and mistakes to Salvador, begging him to avoid the same.

He was 22 years old, and unless you're part robot, you really should have at least a couple sins and mistakes in your rearview mirror at 22, but he was just consumed by guilt. Bless his heart. I really wish he had not tortured himself with that. Nothing you ever did in your life

made you deserve this, you know? It just breaks my heart. Yeah, really, we keep saying it, but just poor kid. Oh, I know. As they passed a hundred days adrift, Cordoba sunk deeper into depression, and with it came paranoia. He kept insinuating Salvador had poisoned him, like, oh, what bad luck I got the poisoned bird. He still wouldn't eat the bird's Salvador caught, and so it was in much worse shape, his arms and legs like sticks and his cheeks hollow. He'd become scared of food altogether, only eating occasional scraps of turtle meat or triggerfish.

It was killing him. He discovered another worry. Are you going to eat me? He asked Salvador. Salvador promised he wouldn't and joked that there wasn't enough meat on and make it worth as wild, but Cordoba couldn't shake the thoughts of his own death. Don't eat me, he said. If I die, put my body up on the prow, tie me to the front of the boat.

Salvador said, stop this nonsense. nobody's dying. But he didn't entirely believe that anymore. I don't want to suffer, Cordova said, and said he'd rather die in the ocean than starve to death on the boat. And he tried to do just that the next time Salvador threw bird guts overboard and attracted the sharks. Goodbye, Chancho, Cordova said, and started climbing over the rail. Salvador grabbed him and easily overpowered him with a bear hug, then dragged him to the icebox and threw him inside, sitting on the lid while Cordova yelled and banged against the walls. When Cordova calmed down, Salvador climbed into the icebox with him and tried to persuade him that they were going to get out of this.

He told him stories about how good it would be to get back to shore, how they'd get nice trucks and cruise around on sunny days and pressing all the local girls. Salvador had worked in a bakery when he was young and convinced Cordova that the two of them would set up a business together, him doing the baking, Cordova, Cordova, Scylada. cycling around town with baskets of fresh bread to sell. This brightened Cordoba up, but only temporarily. Soon he started refusing all food, and when given a bottle of water, would just sit with it, not drinking more than a few sips. I'm going to die this month, he said.

On the morning of the 118th day, as they lay together in the shade of the icebox, Cordoba said, I'm dying, I'm almost gone. Don't think about that, Salvation. said, let's take a nap. I'm tired. I want water, Cordova said. And Salvador got a bottle of water and held it close to his mouth.

Cordova stretched out and shivered, groaning. Don't die, Salvador yelled. Don't leave me alone. But it was too late. Cordova was dead. Salvador propped him up on a bench to make sure a wave wouldn't wash him overboard.

And then tried to ignore the body. The next morning, he started to talk to it. How do you feel? How is your sleep? He answered his own question as if he were Cordoba. I slept good and you? Have you had a breakfast?

Me, I ate in the kingdom of heaven. Salvador spoke to him all day and the next. In the tropical sun, Cordoba's dehydrated body didn't smell as the days passed, just seemed to mummify. By the fourth day, it was nearly black. How is death? Salvador asked. Tell me about death. Is it painful? Is death easy?

Death is beautiful, he answered as Cordova. I'm waiting for you. My God, and this is so hard to listen to, but in a way it's fascinating, too. Like, how often do we get a firsthand story like this? If you've ever wondered what it would be like to be lost at sea, I mean, this is it and all its gritty, awful, you know, glory. On the sixth night since Cordova's death, Salvador was in full conversation with the corpse when he had a sudden realization.

He was talking to a dead body. He'd spent most of the week in madness. He washed Cordoba's feet, took off his shorts and sweatshirt, which could be useful, and slid the body into the water. He was now completely alone, 3,000 miles from where he'd started, almost in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. And that was how he continued for the next 260 days. Oh, my God. For most of it, he still caught fish. but was too far from land to see many birds or turtles.

He risked sharks by taking brief swims under the boat to harvest barnacles. He grew gaunt, and his mind got wild and strange. Then eventually the birds came back. He was closer to land than he had been, but that could still include a range of hundreds of miles. He started to see container ships on the horizon, square blocks that looked almost hallucinatory after so long without direct signs of human activity.

And then there was one that seemed to be sailing straight toward him. Yes, it was definitely headed for him. In fact, as it got closer, he worried that it might just crush his little boat and him with it. The huge container ship passed 50 yards behind him. He saw three men fishing from the stern, five stories high. Salvador waved frantically, screaming, Help, help, here. When he saw them notice him, a surge of pure joy went through him.

Finally, finally, he'd be saved. but the men just smiled and waved back at him as the container ship plowed on through the sea. Its wake tossed his little boat around. It didn't slow down at all. After the ship had gone over the horizon, he started wondering if it had even been real or if he'd imagined the whole encounter. But he decided it had been real, and a cold despair seeped through him. I think this detail made me the most nauseous. It's horrific.

What were they thinking? I have been puzzling over this for day. I just can't imagine. Like, you see this, you know, gaunt, sunburned, his hair is all wild, and he's waving his arms. Help, help, help here. They might not have been able to hear what he was saying, but they saw him. How did you not think? Like, let's just make sure this guy's okay.

But nope, just went on their way. Hi. Can you freaking imagine? And no wonder, that was the, that was like the final straw. Like, that was what finally sent this eternal. eternal optimist into a funk. Yeah. And finally, after a whole year lost at sea, he started to think he would die.

He recognized Cordoba's affliction as it took him over. A lethargy, an inability to take the actions that would keep him alive. He spent days just lying in the icebox, just staring up at its roof. I was tired of working, he said later. I lay down and stretched out. My blood had no strength left. The weakness was also in my mind, so much time thinking. I was always worried. He collected water and caught the little fish, but no longer saw much possibility of avoiding his fate. My relationship with death was no longer one of fear, he said.

If I died, I died. That was God's will. I wouldn't kill myself, but I was waiting. Waiting for death. A month after his encounter with the container ship, a cold rain fell and a stormy. strong wind blew him quickly west. And there, through the rain, emerged a tropical island that looked like the platonic ideal of tropical islands, a sandy beach sloping up to a low green hill covered in palm trees. The current was taking Salvador's boat straight toward it. He stared, unable to believe that that's what he was seeing, that it was real. Surely this had to be a

hallucination, but the island stayed there. As the boat drifted slowly closer, he could see birds in the trees. By early afternoon, the boat was closing in on the beach. Salvador planned to jump off just before it hit land. He knew sailors in Mexico who'd been really badly hurt when the tide through their vessel ashore. Ten yards from shore, gripping his fishing knife in one hand, he leapt into the surf, splashing into waste-deep water. He stood up and laughed. His boat hit the beach and almost flipped over. With so little extended use. Over the last few months, his legs had grown almost too weak to support him. He couldn't wait ashore, so he floated on his belly and tried to swim in. Jellyfish in the water stung him,

and burning spread all through his body. The waves pulled him away from the shore, and for a few terrifying instance he thought he'd be taken back out to sea. But then a big wave came in, lifted him up, and dropped him face down, high up on the beach. He crawled, painfully slowly, up the wet sand until it was dry under his hands. Salvador looked back and saw the waves washing his boat farther down the beach. He crawled over a log at the edge of the forest, shielded from the rain by the fronds of the palm trees, and immediately fell asleep. When he woke up, it wasn't quite dark. He crawled up the slight hill, hoping to reach the summit before dark so he could look around.

As he crawled, he grabbed flowers and grasses and ate them almost unethed. unconsciously, his body trying to fill its desperate need for green things. After 438 days of snatching at every opportunity for food, the abundance of birds chirping and singing in the forest was just astonishing to him. It was like walking out of the desert and just directly into a grocery store. His lethargy had completely vanished with landfall, and he was already planning raids on the bird nest for eggs. His mind was still in hunter mode. In fact, he had no need to worry about sustenance. The ground was littered with coconuts. He smashed one open on a rock, and I can't even imagine how good that tasted. Like he hadn't had anything sweet in over a year. From the top of the little hill, he saw that he was on an island about the size of a football field, but it was just one of a chain circling a central lagoon, separated by shallow sandy waterways that a person could wait across at low tide. With his brain starting to fire on all cylinders, he regretted letting the boat drift away. He'd try to find it tomorrow and would also hunt for materials to make

hooks or a harpoon, because surely there were fish in that calm lagoon. But although his brain was buzzing, his body was letting go of a year's worth of stress. He fell asleep again. He woke up just before dawn and saw lights on an island on the other side of the lagoon just a couple miles away, the lights of a village. There were people here. Could he reach them? Would they be friendly? Before he could think about this more, his body overrode him again, and he fell back to sleep. He had a terrible nightmare about still being on the boat, and when he woke, it took him a while to convince himself the green canopy overhead was real. He crawled down the hill, figuring he'd swim across the narrow waterway to the larger island beside him. Then he stopped dead, staring at a flash of red against the green.

It took him a while to process what he was looking at. a man's short-sleeved shirt hanging on a clothesline to dry. Then he heard a rooster crow. There were people here, right here. Salvador had been lucky. He'd washed ashore on A-Bun A-Tol, the southernmost point of the Marshall Islands. If he'd missed it, there's every chance he wouldn't have been seen again until he reached the Philippines 3,000 miles away.

Jesus. And in the state he'd been in, there was no. No way he would have survived the journey. He wasn't able to stand unaided for more than a few seconds at a time. He lurched down the slope from tree to tree, grabbing them for support. And even that short journey left him breathless and faint. After more than a year longing for human society, he was suddenly deeply anxious. He was scared.

He slowly started across the narrow waterway, yelling out in Spanish. Does anyone hear me? anyone? Emmy Libic Meadow was just finishing up breakfast when she heard the shout. She and her husband lived in a beach hut where she worked husking and drying coconuts. I got up and had a look. As I'm looking across to the other island, I see this white man here. He's only in his briefs and he's yelling.

He looks weak and hungry. My first thought was, this person swam here. He must have fallen off a ship. He also had filthy long hair and a scraggly beard. He looked like a wild man. When Salvador saw Emmy, his brain basically short-circuited at the sight of another human. He froze, then slowly started forward. Emmy and her husband Russell went down to meet him, but stopped when they saw the knife in his hand.

Put down, Russell yelled in English. Put down. He mimed what he wanted. Salvador hesitated. Without his knife, he would have died. It took him several moments to decide he was no longer in a world where that was necessary. Then he flipped the knife into the water. He dropped to his knees and started praying incoherently. When Russell and Emmy approached, he looked scared and lost, ducking his head and avoiding looking at them. Russell's job was chopping and collecting coconuts.

This was a strong Pacific Island dude. He hoisted Salvador onto his back and carried him across the water and back to their house, where Emmy gave him a glass of water that he drank so quickly she worried he'd throw up. On dry land, in a home with people caring for him, Salvador broke down into sobs. Emmy and Russell started crying, too. I told my husband to hug him and comfort him with pats on the back, Emmy said, like white people do. Oh, my God. Bless our sweetheart.

It's so kind. Like, do what would comfort him, you know. And it's so funny to me that they thought he was white. Like, he absolutely isn't. You know, he's from El Salvador. I'm guessing maybe it was just because of the sunburn, but also. evidently his hair had bleached a little bit and so it wasn't his normal black. So he probably just looked kind of strange. Yeah. And he, his natural coloring was pink. That's what he called a

John's why they called him Piggy. Yeah. So he was a little more light skinned. And I will say in some photos, he's giving like a slightly scruffy, like slightly tan Robin Williams. Like not exactly, but like kind of like a little bit Robin Williams from Jumanji. Yeah. And honestly, as a white person, I do like hugs and pats on the back when I'm minorly inconvenient. So I imagine that a hug after being lost at sea for over a year would be like maybe better than water. She's just so sweet. I just that that little detail is probably my favorite in the whole story. I know.

I know. Like white people do. It's so sweet. Bless our sweetheart. Russell gave Salvador some of his clothes to wear and they started a fire. Salvador still wouldn't look at them and shrunk away when they got clothes. He was in fact deeply traumatized. When he went down to look at the lagoon, he was suddenly overcome with terror that he might drown.

He couldn't even walk. Emmy and Russell had to help him back to the hut. Emmy made a plate of pancakes, which he wolfed down. They slaughtered one of their chickens and cooked rice to go with it. These were the opposite of wealthy people, but they gave Salvador everything he needed. It's hard to imagine a better reintroduction to the real world. Even these two kind people were almost overwhelming to him. Anything more might have been unbearable.

Russell sailed the few miles across the lagoon to the little town of Ebon, home to just a few hundred people and got in touch with the mayor, Ione de Broome. Salvador was lucky again. She was a trained nutritionist and headed back across the water with the first aid kit, IV bags, coconut milk, and ripe bananas. As companions, she took the island's one policeman, a nurse, and a Norwegian anthropologist who had a tiny amount of Spanish. Back at the hut, Emmy gave Salvador a bucket of water in a bar of soap,

which is the kind of hint that doesn't need language. He stank like old fish. With drawings, Salvador had managed to communicate to Russell that he wanted to find his boat, and when Russell found it, it was obvious Salvador had been drifting for a long time. Almost every surface was covered with a thin layer of mold. seabird feathers and fish bones covered the deck. A half-eaten turtle lay next to an empty shell. It smelled like blood and rotten meat. The next days seemed to pass in a dream for Salvador.

His sense of time was radically distorted. He thought he'd spent three days with Emmy and Russell, but later found out he'd only been on their island for 12 hours before the boat took him across the water to Apun. Apun was just a little village, but it seemed like everyone who lived there wanted to come and gawk, at the strange castaway. Salvador enjoyed the company of his friends,

but one of the reasons he liked fishing so much was getting away from people. The best of times, having a town treat him like a one-man freak show would have been deeply unpleasant for him, and now it pretty much felt like torture. That feeling got even worse when a boat took him to the capital, Majuro.

This was a city of just 25,000 people, but it felt like a teeming metropolis to Salvador. And worse, a local newspaper report had exploded into brief worldwide interest in his story, and as he got off the boat, Salvador was met with camera flashes and shouted questions from reporters. Poor dude. An ambulance took him to the hospital, where he was immediately given IV fluids. One of the doctors thought he was experiencing psychological shock, a very common response to trauma. His brain was fogged. His feet and legs swelled up with the sudden hydration, so much that

Salvador could barely walk. He was anemic, which did. doctors thought came from parasites he'd caught from raw bird and turtle meat, but it was his mind they were most concerned about. Salvador had experienced a serious trauma. After 11 days, he was flown home to El Salvador and hospitalized there. His parents visited him, and the teenage daughter he barely knew, Fatima. When he was released to his parents' care, he displayed obvious symptoms of PTSD. He tried to use the shower but was scared of the water. He was scared of the water. He preferred to use a bucket. When some red dirt mixed with the water in the bucket, he screamed, thinking it was the turtle blood he'd had to drink. Fatima visited him every day, and at first he couldn't

say a word to her, just looked at her and smiled. He barely communicated with anyone for weeks. Eventually, though, he started to heal. He traveled back to Costa Azul and smoked and drank with his buddies while he told them about his terrible adventure. He also visited Ezekiel, Cordoba's mother to tell her directly what had happened to her son. Cordoba's mother gave Salvador her blessing, but his brothers glared at him. Our main source for the story is Jonathan Franklin's book 438 days, and when the book deal was announced, a lot of people incorrectly assumed that Salvador was making a ton of money from it. Just a few days after that announcement, Cordoba's family sued him for a million dollars,

accusing him without any evidence of cannibalism. Oof. But the suit went nowhere, seeing as just a few months earlier, Cordoba's mother had told reporters, I want it understood that I am not blaming this person, Alvarenga, nor am I declaring him guilty of anything. So, you know, good luck in court with that. Any kind of truce with Cordoba's family seems unlikely, but Salvador did build a relationship with his own daughter. When her mom moved back to Guatemala, Fatima was given the choice to go with her or stay with Salvador and his parents, who had also essentially been parents to her. She chose to stay in El Salvador and got to witness her dad rediscover his sense of humor and joy in life. He told Jonathan Franklin,

Be strong. Think positive. If you start to think to the contrary, you're headed for failure. You have to survive and think about the future of your life, that life is beautiful. And honestly, as harrowing as it is, that's the main thing I'm taken away from the story, to just hold on to hope, you know, even when things are darkest. And try to be a light for the other people in the trenches with you. So, I realize that story probably didn't do us any favors here, but don't forget about our true crime crews coming up. Crime Wave 2.0, February 8th through 12th, 2027. So just over a year away. If you want to come on vacation with us and some of the biggest true crime and paranormal podcasts in the world like case file, true crime garage, and sinisterhood, here's what you got to do.

Tickets go on sale Friday, February 13th. You can pay for your cabin all at once or set up a payment plan and you can and should go ahead and get your discount code now because you can use it for $100 off your cabin and a private meet and greet with us, which we will probably have a ball at, because we loved the one at the first cruise. We laughed our butts off. We fully expect this cruise to sell out fast, so go to CrimeWave at C.com slash campfire to get your discount code. So that was a wild one, right?

Campers, you know, we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the True Crime Campfire. And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely Patreon supporters. Thank you so much to Katie, Neil, Lauren, Kira, and Jennifer. We appreciate y'all to the moon and back. And if you're not yet a patron, you're missing out.

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