“I’ll bet you’ll get what you want. It sounds like a minor military operation and brings a little change into our daily office peacetime routine; besides, it’ll be a good opportunity of methodically testing equipment.”
The liaison office at once arranged a meeting with Colonel Lewis at the quartermaster general’s experimental laboratory, and Herman and I were taken over there by car.
Colonel Lewis was an affable giant of an officer with a sportsman’s bearing. He at once called in the men in charge of experiments in the different sections. All were amicably disposed and immediately suggested quantities of equipment they would like us to test thoroughly. They exceeded our wildest hopes as they rattled off the names of nearly everything we could want, from field rations to sunburn ointment and splash-proof sleeping bags. Then they took us on an extensive tour to look at the things. We tasted special rations in smart packings; we tested matches which struck well even if they had been dipped in water, new primus stoves and water kegs, rubber bags and special boots, kitchen utensils and knives which would float, and all that an expedition could want.
I glanced at Herman. He looked like a good, expectant little boy walking through a chocolate shop with a rich aunt. The colonel walked in front demonstrating all these delights, and when the tour was completed staff clerks had made note of the kinds of goods and the quantities we required. I thought the battle was won and felt only an urge to rush home to the hotel in order to assume a horizontal position and think things over in peace and quiet. Then the tall, friendly colonel suddenly said:
“Well, now we must go in and have a talk with the boss; it’s he who’ll decide whether we can give you these things.”
I felt my heart sink down into my boots. So we were to start our eloquence right from the beginning again, and heaven alone knew what kind of man the “boss” was!
We found that the boss was a little officer with an intensely earnest manner. He sat behind his writing table and examined us with keen blue eyes as we came into the office. He asked us to sit down.
Plans being discussed before the start in the Explorers Club in New York. From left to right: Chief of Clannfhearghuis, Herman Watzinger, the author, Greenland explorer Peter Freuchen.
Over the Andes for wood—our jeep on a mountain road 13,000 feet above sea level. Indians with pack donkeys, Indian women spinning wool as they walk, and flocks of llamas were the only living creatures we met.
In the Ecuadorian jungle we found our balsa logs. We felled the biggest trees we could find, peeled off the bark in Indian style, and built a makeshift raft on which we drifted down the Palenque and the Guayas to the Pacific.
The six members of the Kon-Tiki expedition. From left to right: Knut Haugland, Bengt Danielsson, the author, Erik Hesselberg, Torstein Raaby, Herman Watzinger.
Building the raft in Peru. We lashed the nine big balsa logs together with ordinary hemp ropes, using neither nails nor metal in any form.
“Well, what do these gentlemen want?” he asked Colonel Lewis sharply, without taking his eyes off mine.
“Oh, a few little things,” Lewis hastened to reply. He explained the whole of our errand in outline, while the chief listened patiently without moving a finger.
“And what can they give us in return?” he asked, quite unimpressed.
“Well,” said Lewis in a conciliatory tone, “we hoped that perhaps the expedition would be able to write reports on the new provisions and some of the equipment, based on the severe conditions in which they will be using it.”
The intensely earnest officer behind the writing table leaned back in his chair with unaffected slowness, with his eyes still fixed on mine, and I felt myself sinking to the bottom of the deep leather chair as he said coolly:
“I don’t see at all how they can give us anything in return.”
There was dead silence in the room. Colonel Lewis fingered his collar, and neither of us said a word.
“But,” the chief suddenly broke out, and now a gleam had come into the corner of his eye, “courage and enterprise count, too. Colonel Lewis, let them have the things!”
I was still sitting, half intoxicated with delight, in the cab which was taking us home to the hotel, when Herman began to laugh and giggle to himself at my side.
“Are you tight?” I asked anxiously.
“No,” he laughed shamelessly, “but I’ve been calculating that the provisions we got include 684 boxes of pineapple, and that’s my favorite dish.”
There are a thousand things to be done, and mostly at the same time, when six men and a wooden raft and its cargo are to assemble at a place down on the coast of Peru. And we had three months and no Aladdin’s lamp at our disposal.
We flew to New York with an introduction from the liaison office and met Professor Behre at Columbia University. He was head of the War Department’s Geographical Research Committee, and it was he who pressed the buttons which at last brought Herman all his valuable instruments and apparatus for scientific measurements.
Then we flew to Washington to meet Admiral Glover at the Naval Hydrographic Institute. The good-natured old sea dog called in all his officers and pointed to the chart of the Pacific on the wall as he introduced Herman and me.
“These young gentlemen want to check up on our current maps. Help them!”
When the wheels had rolled a bit further, the English Colonel Lumsden called a conference at the British Military Mission in Washington to discuss our future problems and the chances of a favorable outcome. We received plenty of good advice and a selection of British equipment which was flown over from England to be tried out on the raft expedition. The British medical officer was an enthusiastic advocate of a mysterious shark powder. We were to sprinkle a few pinches of the powder on the water if a shark became too impudent, and the shark would vanish immediately.
“Sir,” I said politely, “can we rely on this powder?”
“Well,” said the Englishman, smiling, “that’s just what we want to find out ourselves!”
When time is short and plane replaces train, while taxi replaces legs, one’s wallet crumples up like a withered herbarium. When we had spent the cost of my return ticket to Norway, we went and called on our friends and backers in New York to get our finances straight. There we encountered surprising and discouraging problems. The financial manager was ill in bed with fever, and his two colleagues were powerless till he was in action again. They stood firmly by our economic agreement, but they could do nothing for the time being. We were asked to postpone the business, a useless request, for we could not stop the numerous wheels which were now revolving vigorously. We could only hold on now; it was too late to stop or brake. Our friends the backers agreed to dissolve the whole syndicate in order to give us a free hand to act quickly and independently without them.
So there we were in the street with our hands in our trousers pockets.
“December, January, February,” said Herman.
“And at a pinch March,” said I, “but then we simply must start!”
If all else seemed obscure, one thing was clear to us. Ours was a journey with an objective, and we did not want to be classed with acrobats who roll down Niagara in empty barrels or sit on the knobs of flag staffs for seventeen days.
“No chewing-gum or pop backing,” Herman said.
On this point we were in profound agreement.
We could get Norwegian currency. But that did not solve the problems on our side of the Atlantic. We could apply for a grant from some institution, but we could scarcely get one for a disputed theory; after all, that was just why we were going on the raft expedition. We soon found that neither press nor private promoters dared to put money into what they themselves and all the insurance companies regarded as a suicide voyage; but, if we came back safe and sound, it would be another matter.
Things looked pretty gloomy, and for many days we could see no ray of hope. It was then that Colonel Munthe-Kaas came into the picture again.
“You’re i
n a fix, boys,” he said. “Here’s a check to begin with. You can return it when you come back from the South Sea islands.”
Several other people followed his example, and my private loan was soon big enough to tide us over without help from agents or others. We could fly to South America and start building the raft.
The old Peruvian rafts were built of balsa wood, which in a dry state is lighter than cork. The balsa tree grows in Peru, but only beyond the mountains in the Andes range, so the seafarers in Inca times went up along the coast to Ecuador, where they felled their huge balsa trees right down on the edge of the Pacific. We meant to do the same.
Today’s travel problems are different from those of Inca times. We have cars and planes and travel bureaus but, so as not to make things altogether too easy, we have also impediments called frontiers, with brass-buttoned attendants who doubt one’s alibi, maltreat one’s luggage, and weigh one down with stamped forms—if one is lucky enough to get in at all. It was the fear of these men with brass buttons that decided us we could not land in South America with packing cases and trunks full of strange devices, raise our hats, and ask politely in broken Spanish to be allowed to come in and sail away on a raft. We should be clapped into jail.
“No,” said Herman. “We must have an official introduction.”
One of our friends in the dissolved triumvirate was a correspondent at the United Nations, and he offered to take us out there by car for aid. We were greatly impressed when we came into the great hall of the assembly, where men of all nations sat on benches side by side listening silently to the flow of speech from a black-haired Russian in front of the gigantic map of the world that decorated the back wall.
Our friend the correspondent managed in a quiet moment to get hold of one of the delegates from Peru and, later, one of Ecuador’s representatives. On a deep leather sofa in an antechamber they listened eagerly to our plan of crossing the sea to support a theory that men of an ancient civilization from their own country had been the first to reach the Pacific islands. Both promised to inform their governments and guaranteed us support when we came to their respective countries. Trygve Lie, passing through the anteroom, came over to us when he heard we were countrymen of his, and someone proposed that he should come with us on the raft. But there were billows enough for him on land. The assistant secretary of the United Nations, Dr. Benjamin Cohen from Chile, was himself a well-known amateur archaeologist, and he gave me a letter to the President of Peru, who was a personal friend of his. We also met in the hall the Norwegian ambassador, Wilhelm von Munthe of Morgenstierne, who from then on gave the expedition invaluable support.
So we bought two tickets and flew to South America. When the four heavy engines began to roar one after another, we sank into our seats exhausted. We had an unspeakable feeling of relief that the first stage of the program was over and that we were now going straight ahead to the adventure.
3
TO SOUTH AMERICA
Over the Equator — Balsa Problems —
By Air to Quito — Head-Hunters and Bandidos —
Over the Andes by Jeep —
Into the Depths of the Jungle — At Quevedo —
We Fell Balsa Trees —
Down the Palenque by Raft -
The Beautiful Naval Harbor —
At the Ministry of Marine in Lima —
With the President of Peru —
Danielsson Comes —
Back to Washington —
Twenty-Six Pounds of Paper —
Herman’s Baptism of Fire —
We Build the Raft in the Naval Harbor —
Warnings — Before the Start —
Naming of the Kon-Tiki —
Farewell to South America
To South America
AS OUR PLANE CROSSED THE EQUATOR, IT BEGAN A slanting descent through the milk-white clouds which till then had lain beneath us like a blinding waste of snow in the burning sun. The fleecy vapor clung to the windows till it dissolved and remained hanging over us like clouds, and the bright green roof of a rolling, billowy jungle appeared. We flew in over the South American republic of Ecuador and landed at the tropical port of Guayaquil.
With yesterday’s coats, vests, and overcoats over our arms we climbed out into the atmosphere of a hothouse to meet chattering southerners in tropical clothes and felt our shirts sticking to our backs like wet paper. We were embraced by customs and immigration officials and almost carried to a cab, which took us to the best hotel in the town, the only good one. Here we quickly found our way to our respective baths and lay down flat under the cold-water faucet. We had reached the country where the balsa tree grows and were to buy timber to build our raft.
The first day we spent in learning the monetary system and enough Spanish to find our way back to the hotel. On the second day we ventured away from our baths in steadily widening circles, and, when Herman had satisfied the longing of his childhood to touch a real palm tree and I was a walking bowl of fruit salad, we decided to go and negotiate for balsa.
Unfortunately this was easier said than done. We could certainly buy balsa in quantities but not in the form of whole logs, as we wanted it. The days when balsa trees were accessible down on the coast were past. The last war had put an end to them; they had been felled in thousands and shipped to the aircraft factories because the wood was so gaseous and light. We were told that the only place where large balsa trees now grew was in the jungle in the interior of the country.
“Then we must go inland and fell them ourselves,” we said.
“Impossible,” said the authorities. “The rains have just begun, and all the roads into the jungle are impassable because of flood water and deep mud. If you want balsa wood, you must come back to Ecuador in six months; the rains will be over then and the roads up country will have dried.”
In our extremity we called on Don Gustavo von Buchwald, the balsa king of Ecuador, and Herman unrolled his sketch of the raft with the lengths of timber we required. The slight little balsa king seized the telephone eagerly and set his agents to work searching. They found planks and light boards and separate short blocks in every sawmill but they could not find one single serviceable log. There were two big logs, as dry as tinder, at Don Gustavo’s own dump, but they would not take us far. It was clear that the search was useless.
“But a brother of mine has a big balsa plantation,” said Don Gustavo encouragingly. “His name is Don Federico and he lives at Quevedo, a little jungle town up country. He can get you all you want as soon as we can get hold of him after the rains. It’s no use now because of the jungle rain up country.”
If Don Gustavo said a thing was no use, all the balsa experts in Ecuador would say it was no use. So here we were in Guayaquil with no timber for the raft and with no possibility of going in and felling the trees ourselves until several months later, when it would be too late.
“Time’s short,” said Herman.
“And balsa we must have,” said I. “The raft must be an exact copy, or we shall have no guarantee of coming through alive.”
A little school map we found in the hotel, with green jungle, brown mountains, and inhabited places ringed round in red, told us that the jungle stretched unbroken from the Pacific right to the foot of the towering Andes. I had an idea. It was clearly impracticable now to get from the coastal area through the jungle to the balsa trees at Quevedo, but suppose we could get to the trees from the inland side, by coming straight down into the jungle from the bare snow mountains of the Andes range? Here was a possibility, the only one we saw.
Out on the airfield we found a little cargo plane which was willing to take us up to Quito, the capital of this strange country, high up on the Andes plateau, 9,300 feet above sea level. Between packing cases and furniture we caught occasional glimpses of green jungle and shining rivers before we disappeared into the clouds. When we came out again, the lowlands were hidden under an endless sea of rolling vapor, but ahead of us dry mountainsides and bare cliffs rose
from the sea of mist right up to a brilliant blue sky.
The plane climbed straight up the mountainside as in an invisible funicular railway, and, although the Equator itself was in sight, at last we had shining snow fields alongside us. Then we glided between the mountains and over a rich alpine plateau clad in spring green, on which we landed close to the world’s most unusual capital.
Most of Quito’s 175,000 inhabitants are pure or half-breed mountain Indians, for it was their forefathers’ own capital long before Columbus and our own race knew America. The city is filled with ancient monasteries, containing art treasures of immeasurable value, and other magnificent buildings dating from Spanish times, towering over the roofs of low Indian houses built of bricks of sun-dried clay. A labyrinth of narrow alleys winds between the clay walls, and these we found swarming with mountain Indians in red-speckled cloaks and big homemade hats. Some were going to market with pack donkeys, while others sat hunched up along the adobe walls dozing in the hot sun. A few automobiles containing aristocrats of Spanish origin, going at half-speed and hooting ceaselessly, succeeded in finding a path along the one-way alleys among children and donkeys and barelegged Indians. The air up here on the high plateau was of such brilliant crystalline clearness that the mountains round us seemed to come into the street picture and contribute to its other-world atmosphere.