He walked to the small beach house belonging to the couple and began shouting. They came out. He was still holding the knife. He dropped it.
The couple, Amy Libokmeto and Russell Laijedrik, did not speak Spanish and he did not speak Marshallese or English. Communication was through gestures, drawings, and — according to the Tico Times account — through the couple’s son, who knew a few Spanish words he had learned from the children’s television program Dora the Explorer.
They took him in, gave him a bath — the first proper wash in more than four hundred days — and fed him pancakes. They communicated that they would get help.
## From Ebon to Majuro: The Official Reception
Russell Laijedrik took Alvarenga’s boat to the main island of Ebon, where the atoll’s local administration was based. The mayor, Ione de Brum, was contacted and gathered officials, along with a Norwegian anthropology student who happened to be visiting the atoll and could assist with communication and preliminary assessment.
The initial response was, appropriately, cautious. The story Alvarenga was telling was extraordinary — a man claiming to have drifted from Mexico, more than 6,000 miles away, for over a year. The mayor initially declined to give him phone access, choosing instead to contact authorities in the capital, Majuro. A government patrol boat was arranged to transport him to Majuro, where proper medical facilities and officials could assess his condition and his account.
He stayed on Ebon for approximately five days before the patrol boat arrived to take him to Majuro.