Kantuta Expeditions
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The Kantuta expeditions were two separate
Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is ...
expeditions on balsa rafts led by the
Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus *Czech (surnam ...
explorer and adventurer Eduard Ingris in 1955 and 1959, inspired by
Thor Heyerdahl Thor Heyerdahl KStJ (; 6 October 1914 – 18 April 2002) was a Norwegian adventurer and Ethnography, ethnographer with a background in biology with specialization in zoology, botany and geography. Heyerdahl is notable for his Kon-Tiki expediti ...
's ''Kon-Tiki'' expedition, The goal of Ingris'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. The first voyage which Ingris and his crew attempted on the raft ''La Kantuta'', sailed from Talara, Peru on 4 December 1955. It ended in failure 90 days later. Straying too far north, the raft entered the equatorial doldrums and became stuck going round and round in a 600-mile-wide
gyre In oceanography, a gyre () is any large system of ocean surface currents moving in a circular fashion driven by wind movements. Gyres are caused by the Coriolis effect; planetary vorticity, horizontal friction and vertical friction determine the ...
. For six weeks, the crew weathered starvation and resentment, until they were finally rescued by a United States naval vessel returning from Antarctica. Ingris spent the next three years building ''La Kantuta II''. On 12 April 1959, the raft was towed from
Callao Callao () is a Peruvian seaside city and Regions of Peru, region on the Pacific Ocean in the Lima metropolitan area. Callao is Peru's chief seaport and home to its main airport, Jorge Chávez International Airport. Callao municipality consists ...
, Peru, to the
Humboldt Current The Humboldt Current, also called the Peru Current, is a cold, low-salinity ocean current that flows north along the western coast of South America.Montecino, Vivian, and Carina B. Lange. "The Humboldt Current System: Ecosystem components and pro ...
. Four months later, Ingris and Joaquin Guerrero completed the expedition successfully, despite two of the new crewmembers having abandoned ship, taking the water supply with them. Having sailed a distance of 6,000 miles, ''La Kantuta II'' finally smashed onto the reef at
Mataiva Mataiva (meaning "Nine Eyes" in Tuamotuan language, Tuamotuan), Tepoetiriura ("Sparkling Pearl")
, an atoll north of Tahiti, the last island in the ocean current's path.


See also

*
Pre-Columbian rafts Pre-Columbian rafts plied the Pacific Coast of South America for trade from about 100 BCE, and possibly much earlier. The 16th-century descriptions by the Spanish of the rafts used by Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Native Americans along th ...
* William Willis, also rafted across the Pacific.


References


External links


Raft Voyage, from High C's to High Seas
*
Krajane
Replications of ancient voyages Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact {{CzechRepublic-stub