It was on this day in 1947 that the raft Kon Tiki made it to the reefs of Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands, following a one hundred and one day voyage covering some four thousand, plus miles. While the project’s leader Thor Heyerdahl’s theory that Polynesia could have been populated from the Americas has generally been discredited, the very audacity of his adventure coupled with very good filming, and a best selling book left my generation with a contemporary vision of adventure. I wasn’t born for a year, but my childhood, which in many was was deeply constrained, was also filled with images from this expedition, of word and picture, which infiltrated my dreams.
And led me to consider a larger world…
So, thank you, Thor!
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In