Kon-Tiki

by Thor Heyerdahl

I slept well, except that I woke up thinking of poisonous creatures every time a lizard or bat squeaked and scrabbled too noisily near my pillow.

  Next morning we got up early to go and search for balsa trees.

  “Better shake our clothes,” said Agurto, and as he spoke a scorpion fell out of his shirt sleeve and shot down into a crack in the floor.

  Soon after sunrise Don Federico sent his men out on horseback in all directions to look for accessible balsa trees along the paths. Our own party consisted of Don Federico, Herman, and myself, and we soon found our way to an open place where there was a gigantic old tree of which Don Federico knew. It towered high above the trees round about, and the trunk was three feet thick. In Polynesian style we christened the tree before we touched it; we gave it the name Ku, after a Polynesian deity of American origin. Then we swung the ax and drove it into the balsa trunk till the forest echoed our blows. But cutting a sappy balsa was like cutting cork with a blunt ax; the ax simply rebounded, and I had not delivered many strokes before Herman had to relieve me. The ax changed hands time after time, while the splinters flew and the sweat trickled in the heat of the jungle.

  Late in the day Ku was standing like a cock on one leg, quivering under our blows; soon he tottered and crashed down heavily over the surrounding forest, big branches and small trees being pulled down by the giant’s fall. We had torn the branches from the trunk and were beginning to rip off the bark in zigzags in Indian style when Herman suddenly dropped the ax and leaped into the air as if doing a Polynesian war dance, with his hand pressed to his leg. Out of his trouser leg fell a shining ant as big as a scorpion and with a long sting at its tail. It must have had a skull like a lobster’s claw, for it was almost impossible to stamp it under one’s heel on the ground.

  “A kongo,” Don Federico explained with regret. “The little brute’s worse than a scorpion, but it isn’t dangerous to a healthy man.”

  Herman was tender and sore for several days, but this did not prevent his galloping with us on horseback along the jungle paths, looking for more giant balsas in the forest. From time to time we heard creaking and crashing and a heavy thud somewhere in the virgin forest. Don Federico nodded with a satisfied air. It meant that his half-breed Indians had felled a new giant balsa for the raft. In a week Ku had been followed by Kane, Kama, Ilo, Mauri, Ra, Rangi, Papa, Taranga, Kura, Kukara, and Hiti—twelve mighty balsas, all christened in honor of Polynesian legendary figures whose names had once been borne with Tiki over the sea from Peru. The logs, glistening with sap, were dragged down through the jungle first by horses and at the last by Don Federico’s tractor, which brought them to the riverbank in front of the bungalow.

  The sap-filled logs were far from being as light as corks. They must have weighed a ton apiece, and we waited with great anxiety to see how they would float in the water. We rolled them out to the edge of the bank one by one; there we made fast a rope of tough, climbing plants to the ends of the logs that they might not vanish downstream when we let them enter the water. Then we rolled them in turn down the bank and into the river. There was a mighty splash. They swung round and floated, about as much above as below the surface of the water, and when we went out along them they remained steady. We bound the timbers together with tough lianas that hung down from the tops of the jungle trees, so as to make two temporary rafts, one towing the other. Then we loaded the rafts with all the bamboos and lianas we should need later, and Herman and I went on board with two men of a mysterious mixed race, with whom we had no common language.

  When we cut our moorings, we were caught by the whirling masses of water and went off downstream at a good pace. The last glimpse we had in the drizzle, as we rounded the first headland, was of our excellent friends standing on the end of the point in front of the bungalow, waving. Then we crept under a little shelter of green banana leaves and left steering problems to the two brown experts who had stationed themselves one in the bow and one astern, each holding a huge oar. They kept the raft in the swiftest current with nonchalant ease, and we danced downstream on a winding course between sunken trees and sandbanks.

  The jungle stood like a solid wall along the banks on both sides, and parrots and other bright-colored birds fluttered out of the dense foliage as we passed. Once or twice an alligator hurled itself into the river and became invisible in the muddy water. But we soon caught sight of a much more remarkable monster. This was an iguana, or giant lizard, as big as a crocodile but with a large throat and fringed back. It lay dozing on the clay bank as if it had overslept from prehistoric times and did not move as we glided past. The oarsmen made signs to us not to shoot. Soon afterward we saw a smaller specimen about three feet long. It was running away along a thick branch which hung out over the raft. It ran only till it was in safety, and then it sat, all shining blue and green, and stared at us with cold snake’s eyes as we passed. Later we passed a fern-clad hillock, and on the top of it lay the biggest iguana of all. It was like the silhouette of a fringed Chinese dragon carved in stone as it stood out motionless against the sky with chest and head raised. It did not as much as turn its head as we curved round it under the hillocks and vanished into the jungle.

  Farther down we smelled smoke and passed several huts with straw roofs which lay in clearings along the bank. We on the raft were the objects of close attention from sinister-looking individuals on land, an unfavorable mixture of Indian, Negro, and Spaniard. Their boats, great dugout canoes, lay drawn up on to the bank.

  When mealtimes came, we relieved our friends at the steering oars while they fried fish and breadfruit over a little fire regulated with wet clay. Roast chicken, eggs, and tropical fruits were also part of the menu on board, while the logs transported themselves and us at a fine speed down through the jungle toward the sea. What did it matter now if the water swept and splashed round us? The more it rained, the swifter the current ran.

  When darkness fell over the river, an ear-splitting orchestra struck up on the bank. Toads and frogs, crickets and mosquitoes, croaked or chirped or hummed in a prolonged chorus of many voices. Now and again the shrill scream of a wild cat rang through the darkness, and soon another, and yet another, from birds scared into flight by the night prowlers of the jungle. Once or twice we saw the gleam of a fire in a native hut and heard bawling voices and the barking of dogs as we slid past in the night. But for the most part we sat alone with the jungle orchestra under the stars, till drowsiness and rain drove us into the cabin of leaves, where we went to sleep with our pistols loose in their holsters.

  The farther downstream we drifted, the thicker became the huts and native plantations, and soon there were regular villages on the banks. The traffic here consisted of dugout canoes punted along with long poles, and now and then we saw a little balsa raft loaded with heaps of green bananas bound for market.

  Where the Palenque joined the Rio Guayas, the water had risen so high that the paddle steamer was plying busily between Vinces and Guayaquil down on the coast. To save valuable time Herman and I each got a hammock on board the paddle steamer and steamed off across the thickly populated flat country to the coast. Our brown friends were to follow, drifting down alone with the timber.

  At Guayaquil Herman and I parted. He was to remain at the mouth of the Guayas to stop the balsa logs as they came drifting down. Thence he was to take them, as cargo on a coasting steamer, to Peru, where he was to direct the building of the raft and make a faithful copy of the Indians’ old-time vessels. I myself took the regular plane southward to Lima, the capital of Peru, to find a suitable place for building the raft.

  The plane ascended to a great height along the shore of the Pacific, with the desert mountains in Peru on one side and a glittering ocean far below us on the other. It was here we were to put to sea on board the raft. The sea seemed endless when seen from a plane high up. Sky and sea melted into each other along an indefinable horizon far, far away to the westward, and I could not rid myself of the thought that even beyond that horizon many hundred similar
sea plains curved onward round a fifth of the earth before there was any more land—in Polynesia. I tried to project my thoughts a few weeks ahead, when we should be drifting on a speck of a raft on that blue expanse below, but quickly dismissed the thought again, for it gave me the same unpleasant feeling inside as sitting in readiness to jump with a parachute.

  On my arrival in Lima I took the street car down to the port of Callao to find a place where we could build the raft. I saw at once that the whole harbor was chock-full of ships and cranes and warehouses, with customs sheds and harbor offices and all the rest. And, if there was any open beach farther out, it swarmed with bathers to such a degree that inquisitive people would pull the raft and fittings to pieces as soon as our backs were turned. Callao was now the most important port in a country of seven million people, white and brown. Times had changed for raft-builders in Peru even more than in Ecuador, and I saw only one possibility—to get inside the high concrete walls round the naval harbor, where armed men stood on guard behind the iron gate and cast menacing and suspicious looks on me and other unauthorized persons who loafed past the walls. If one could only get in there, one would be safe.

  I had met the Peruvian naval attaché in Washington and had a letter from him to support me. I went to the Ministry of Marine next day with the letter and sought an audience of the minister of marine, Manuel Nieto. He received in the morning in the elegant Empire drawing room of the Ministry, gleaming with mirrors and gilding. After a time he himself came in in full uniform, a short broadly built officer, as stern as Napoleon, straightforward and concise in his manner of speech. He asked why and I said why. I asked to be allowed to build a wooden raft in the naval dockyard.

  “Young man,” said the minister, drumming uneasily with his fingers. “You’ve come in by the window instead of the door. I’ll be glad to help you, but the order must come from the foreign minister to me; I can’t let foreigners into the naval area and give them the use of the dockyard as a matter of course. Apply to the Foreign Ministry in writing, and good luck.”

  I thought apprehensively of papers circulating and disappearing into the blue. Happy were the rude days of Kon-Tiki, when applications were an unknown hindrance!

  To see the foreign minister in person was considerably harder. Norway had no local legation in Peru, and our helpful Consul General Bahr could, therefore, take me no farther than the counselors of the Foreign Ministry. I was afraid things would get no further. Dr. Cohen’s letter to the President of the republic might come in useful now. So I sought through his adjutant an audience of His Excellency Don José Bustamante y Rivero, president of Peru. A day or two later I was told to be at the palace at twelve o’clock.

  Lima is a modern city, with half a million inhabitants, and lies spread over a green plain at the foot of the desert mountains. Architecturally, and thanks not least to its gardens and plantations, it is surely one of the most beautiful capitals in the world—a bit of modern California or Riviera variegated with old Spanish architecture. The president’s palace lies in the middle of the city and is strongly guarded by armed sentries in gaily colored costumes. An audience in Peru is a serious business, and few people have seen the president except on the screen. Soldiers in shining bandoleers escorted me upstairs and to the end of a long corridor; here my name was taken and registered by three civilians, and I was shown through a colossal oak door into a room with a long table and rows of chairs. A man dressed in white received me, asked me to sit down, and disappeared. A moment later a large door opened, and I was shown into a much handsomer room, where an imposing person in a spotless uniform advanced toward me.

  “The President,” I thought, drawing myself up. But no. The man in the gold-edged uniform offered me an antique straight-backed chair and disappeared. I had sat on the edge of my chair for barely a minute when yet another door opened and a servant bowed me into a large gilded room with gilded furniture and splendidly decorated. The fellow vanished as quickly as he had appeared, and I sat quite alone on an antique sofa with a view of a string of empty rooms whose doors stood open. It was so silent that I could hear someone coughing cautiously several rooms away. Then steady steps approached, and I jumped up and hesitatingly greeted an imposing gentleman in uniform. But, no, this too was not he. But I understood enough of what he said to gather that the President sent me his greetings and would be free very soon when a meeting of ministers was over.

  Ten minutes later steady steps once more broke the silence, and this time a man with gold lace and epaulets came in. I sprang briskly from the sofa and bowed deeply. The man bowed still more deeply and led me through several rooms and up a staircase with thick carpets. Then he left me in a tiny little room with one leather-covered chair and one sofa. In came a little man in a white suit, and I waited resignedly to see where he intended to take me. But he took me nowhere, only greeted me amiably and remained standing. This was President Bustamante y Rivero.

  The President had twice as much English as I had Spanish, so when we had greeted one another and he had begged me with a gesture to sit down, our common vocabulary was exhausted. Signs and gesticulations will do a lot, but they will not get one permission to build a raft in a naval harbor in Peru. The only thing I perceived was that the President did not understand what I was saying, and he grasped that still more clearly himself, for in a little while he disappeared and came back with the air minister. The air minister, General Reveredo, was a vigorous athletic man in an Air Force uniform. He spoke English splendidly with an American accent.

  I apologized for the misunderstanding and said it was not to the airfield that I had been trying to ask for admission but to the naval harbor. The general laughed and explained that he had only been called in as interpreter. Bit by bit the theory was translated to the President, who listened closely and put sharp questions through General Reveredo. At last he said:

  “If it is possible that the Pacific islands were first discovered from Peru, Peru has an interest in this expedition. If we can do anything for you, tell us.”

  I asked for a place where we could build the raft within the walls of the naval area, access to the naval workshops, a place for the storage of equipment and facilities for bringing it into the country, the use of the dry dock and of naval personnel to help us in the work, and a vessel to tow us out from the coast when we started.

  “What is he asking for?” the President asked eagerly, so that I too understood.

  “Nothing much,” Reveredo answered, looking at me with a twinkle in his eye. And the President, satisfied, nodded as a sign of approval.

  Before the meeting broke up, Reveredo promised that the foreign minister should receive orders from the President personally, and that Minister of Marine Nieto should be given a free hand to give us all the help we had asked for.

  “God preserve you all!” said the General, laughing and shaking his head. The adjutant came in and escorted me out to a waiting messenger.

  That day the Lima papers published a paragraph about the Norwegian raft expedition which was to start from Peru; at the same time they announced that a Swedish-Finnish scientific expedition had finished its studies among the jungle Indians in the Amazon regions. Two of the Swedish members of the Amazon expedition had come on up the river by canoe to Peru and had just arrived in Lima. One was Bengt Danielsson, from Uppsala University, who was now going to study the mountain Indians in Peru.

  I cut out the paragraph, and was sitting in my hotel writing to Herman about the site for building the raft, when I was interrupted by a knock on the door. In came a tall sunburned fellow in tropical clothes, and, when he took off his white helmet, it looked as if his flaming red beard had burned his face and scorched his hair thin. That fellow came from the wilds, but his place was clearly a lecture room.

  “Bengt Danielsson,” I thought.

  “Bengt Danielsson,” said the man, introducing himself.

  “He’s heard about the raft,” I thought and asked him to sit down.

  “I’ve just
heard of the raft plans,” said the Swede.

  “And now he’s come to knock down the theory, because he’s an ethnologist,” I thought.

  “And now I’ve come to ask if I may come with you on the raft,” the Swede said peaceably. “I’m interested in the migration theory.”

  I knew nothing about the man except that he was a scientist and that he had come straight out of the depths of the jungle. But if a solitary Swede had the pluck to go out on a raft with five Norwegians, he could not be squeamish. And not even that imposing beard could hide his placid nature and gay humor.

  Bengt became the sixth member of the crew, for the place was still vacant. And he was the only one who spoke Spanish.

  When the passenger plane droned northward along the coast a few days later with me on board, I again looked down with respect on to the endless blue sea beneath us. It seemed to hang and float loose under the firmament itself. Soon we six were to be packed together like microbes on a mere speck, down there where there was so much water that it looked as if it overflowed all along the western horizon. We were to be part of a desolate world without being able to get more than a few steps away from one another. For the time being, at any rate, there was elbowroom enough between us. Herman was in Ecuador waiting for the timber. Knut Haugland and Torstein Raaby had just arrived in New York by air. Erik Hesselberg was on board ship from Oslo, bound for Panama. I myself was en route for Washington by air, and Bengt was in the hotel at Lima ready to start, waiting to meet the others.

  No two of these men had met before, and they were all of entirely different types. That being so, we should have been on the raft for some weeks before we got tired of one another’s stories. No storm clouds with low pressure and gusty weather held greater menace for us than the danger of psychological cloudburst among six men shut up together for months on a drifting raft. In such circumstances a good joke was often as valuable as a life belt.