Kon Tiki Museum

Trip Start Jun 08, 2004
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Trip End Jun 30, 2004


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Flag of Norway  , Oslo,
Saturday, June 26, 2004

As a youngster I read the book Kon Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl where he chronicled his first adventure. As a young boy, this inspired me to want to go to sea when I grew up which I did but in the Navy on a steel ship not a raft (these were the days before TV which has destroyed children's imagination)! Heyerdahl believed that South Americans had traveled to and perhaps settled Polynesia by balsa wood rafts. He went to Peru and built a raft modeled after Spanish descriptions of native craft. Kon Tiki
Kon Tiki
 1-Kon Tiki
1-Kon Tiki
 2-Kon Tiki
2-Kon Tiki
 In 1947, he and his crew sailed the raft to the Tuamotu Islands in French Polynesia. They sailed over 4300 miles in 101 days.

In 1969 he attempted a similar venture. He had a papyrus reed raft built by natives from Chad. He set sail from Morocco headed to the New World but the raft broke up and the attempt was abandoned. He didn't give up and had a second raft built in 1971, called Ra II, by Indians at Lake Titicaca in Bolivia. Ra II
Ra II
 1-Ra II
1-Ra II
He again sailed from Morocco and this time was successful. He made landfall in Barbados in the Carribbean.

Both rafts are on display in the museum.

We then departed heading for the village where my paternal greatgrandparents emigrated from in 1850.
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