Kantuta Expeditions
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The Kantuta expeditions were two separate Pacific Ocean expeditions on balsa rafts led by the Czech explorer and adventurer Eduard Ingriš in 1955 and 1959, inspired by Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki expedition.[1] The goal of Ingriš's Kantuta expeditions was to repeat the success of the Kon-Tiki and confirm Heyerdahl's theory about the migration of early South Americans to Polynesia.[1]
First expedition
The first voyage, which Ingriš and his crew attempted on the raft La Kantuta, sailed from Talara, Peru on 4 December 1955.[1] It ended in failure 90 days later.[1] Straying too far north, the raft entered the equatorial doldrums and became stuck going round and round in a 600-mile-wide gyre.[1] For six weeks, the crew weathered starvation and resentment, until they were finally rescued by a United States naval vessel returning from Antarctica.[1][2]
Second expedition
Ingriš spent the next three years building La Kantuta II.[1] On 12 April 1959, the raft was towed from Callao, Peru, to the Humboldt Current.[1] Four months later, Ingriš and Joaquin Guerrero completed the expedition successfully, despite two of the new crew members having abandoned ship, taking the water supply with them.[2] Having sailed a distance of 6,000 miles, La Kantuta II finally smashed onto the reef at Mataiva, an atoll north of Tahiti, the last island in the ocean current's path.[1][2]
See also
- Pre-Columbian rafts
- William Willis, also rafted across the Pacific
