
We recently finished reading Kon Tiki, the book in which Thor Heyerdahl, and five companions, set sail from Peru in the late 1940s, in a homemade raft of stone-age design, to prove that Polynesia could have been settled from South America.
Say what you will about his anthropological theories but the book is an adventure story par excellance.
Upon realizing that he could not convince the group to give up their quest, one of the Peruvian Navy officers, on hand to assist the expedition before their launch, said something like, “Your parents will be saddened to hear of your demise.”
And then they set sail.
We were riveted reading about the glow-in-the-dark seas, the would-it-hold-together creaking of the raft, and the giant whale sharks that trailed it.
Oh, did I mention that they drove jeeps down from the Andes into the balsa forests to fell the logs for the raft themselves, then basically rode the logs downriver to the coast? That’s when men were men, my friends.
If you’re not reading anything at the moment, pick it up. It’s fantastic.