The Salvadoran fisherman who says he survived 13 months adrift in the Pacific was released from a hospital on Tuesday after a week-long stay, but his destination is being kept secret.
"I'm doing well, thank you very much," Jose Salvador Alvarenga told reporters as he walked out of hospital near San Salvador with the health minister and a nurse holding his arms.
Alvarenga had been expected to return to his family's coastal village of Garita Palmera after he returned to his homeland last week following an odyssey that had taken him from Mexico to the Marshall Islands.
But the 37-year-old, who doctors say has developed a phobia of the sea, told reporters: "I don't want to return to Garita Palmera."
Alvarenga waved and hugged his mother and father outside the emergency room exit of the San Rafael National Hospital in the Santa Tecla suburb before disappearing from view.
In an apparent attempt to lose the gaggle of reporters, several sport-utility vehicles left the hospital in various directions.
Doctors declared Alvarenga in remarkable physical health despite an ordeal in which he survived by eating raw fish and bird flesh while drinking turtle blood, rainwater and his own urine.
But they warned last week that he is psychologically weak, prescribing him antidepressants and anxiety medication.
Psychiatrist Angel Fredi Sermeno said doctors will monitor his mental health.
Alvarenga washed ashore in the Marshall Islands on January 30, telling reporters he had survived a 12,500-kilometer voyage in a seven-metre fiberglass boat after setting off from Mexico's Pacific coast in late 2012.
