Castaway Alvarenga keeps his promise to dead companion

The mysterious castaway Jose Salvador Alvarenga flew from El Salvador to Mexico this week to keep his word - more than a month after the stunning story of his ordeal and survival captured international attention, reports CNN.

The castaway made a promise to his companion Ezequiel Cordoba while the latter was dying: He vowed the man's mother would learn how he perished and hear his last words.

Alvarenga claimed he miraculously survived on the sea for 13 months, as he could not find his way back to the land. He was found in an atoll in the Marshall Islands in late January, and he told authorities there that he had drifted on a small fishing boat for 13 months all the way from Mexico, more than 6,000 miles away.

After fully recovering from the disaster, the 37-year-old man sought for the mother of his companion in order to fulfill his promise.

"It's a promise that we both had made," Alvarenga said after landing in Mexico City, "and now I'm here to fulfill it."

Alvarenga said Cordoba died four weeks into their ordeal because he couldn't manage to drink turtle blood and eat raw fish which he, Salvador himself, supposedly ate in order to remain alive.

Alvarenga claims that Cordoba, who was an Evangelical Christian, thought him the ways of God, as they were hopeful of being found alive and rescued in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

"He taught me how to pray," Alvarenga said. "He taught me to sing."

The castaway added that there were some things Cordoba told him that only the dead fisherman's mother must know.

"To reveal them publicly," he said, "would be to betray his memory."