Kon-Tiki — a book that changed my life

And a real-life adventure

The first true adventure story I read was Kon-Tiki. I think I was born with an appetite for adventure, and I wondered if I was more of a Huckleberry Finn or a Tom Sawyer. But it wasn’t until I read Kon-Tiki — I was about 12 years old — that I realized I could actually go on my own adventures. That may sound like an obvious conclusion, but what I mean is that this idea graduated from my head to my heart.

I didn’t know the Kon-Tiki still existed until I arrived in Norway. And today, I got to see the actual raft that Thor Heyerdahl built and sailed across the Pacific Ocean to recreate the colonization of Polynesia. It’s stored at the wonderful Kon-Tiki Museet (museum) in Oslo. It was amazing to see all the wounds the raft endured from its voyage, like how the rocking of the sea caused the ropes to chew through the giant balsa logs.

The book Kon-Tiki recounts Thor Heyerdahl’s 1947 expedition across the Pacific Ocean on a balsa wood raft. Intrigued by Polynesian legends suggesting their ancestors sailed from South America, Thor aimed to prove this theory. He and five companions constructed a simple raft, the Kon-Tiki, using only materials and techniques available to ancient South Americans. Then they loaded it primarily with supplies only available to the ancients, like coconuts, relying mostly on their ability to catch fish. They relied on the wind and ocean to propel the raft and navigated only using the sun and stars.

Departing from Peru, they drifted with the ocean currents for 101 days, covering approximately 4,300 nautical miles. The book vividly describes their daily life at sea, the challenges they faced from storms and marine life (including sharks, whales and flying fish), and the breathtaking beauty of the Pacific.

The Kon-Tiki eventually made landfall on the Polynesian island of Raroia in the Tuamotu Archipelago. While the voyage demonstrated that such a journey was possible, the scientific community still largely believes that Polynesia was primarily settled by migrations from Asia. Nevertheless, Kon-Tiki remains a thrilling tale of adventure, courage, and one man’s determination to test his unconventional theory.

Another adventure — the RA II

Rather than rest on his laurels, Thor invested the money from his unexpected success into more adventures in the name of research.

His journey with the raft Ra II was another fascinating attempt to prove his theories about ancient transoceanic voyages. By the way, the first raft, the Ra, started to sink about a week from the end of their voyage, so Thor abandoned ship, flew back to Africa and started over.

In this case, Thor aimed to demonstrate that ancient Egyptians could have sailed to the Americas. To do this, he built a boat based on ancient Egyptian papyrus boat designs and named it Ra, after the Egyptian sun god.  

The first attempt in 1969, sailing from Morocco, unfortunately, ended prematurely in Barbados when the Ra began to disintegrate after weeks at sea. Undeterred, Thor built a second papyrus boat, Ra II, with some modifications based on what they learned from the first voyage.  

In 1970, Ra II, with an international crew, successfully sailed from Morocco to Barbados, proving that a papyrus vessel could indeed cross the Atlantic. This expedition, documented in his book The Ra Expeditions, further fueled the debate about the possibilities of ancient maritime connections between different cultures. It highlighted the ingenuity of ancient boat-building techniques and the potential for much earlier transoceanic travel than conventionally believed.

Thor Heyerdahl’s legacy

Thor didn’t stop there. His whole life was full of adventures.

What strikes me most is how Thor’s adventures speak to something primal in me – the desire to test boundaries, to feel the elements directly, to answer questions through experience rather than theory. This was actually a motivating reason to take my own journey on a bicycle around the world. I wanted to see it with my own eyes.

In our age of technology and convenience, there’s something refreshingly primordial about six men on a wooden raft, surrendering to the natural forces rather than trying to conquer them.

Have you ever undertaken a journey to prove something to yourself or others? Let me know in the comments below.