tangaroa

Since mid January the crew have cut balsa timber in Ecuador, floated the logs down river to Guayaquil, transported it to Peru, and built a raft. The preparations have been going on for three years.

On Friday the 28th of April the expedition will start their long journey towards Polynesia, on the very same spot and the same date as Thor Heyerdahl launched the world famous Kon-Tiki raft in 1947. At that time, the journey took 101 days, ending at the Raroia reef. Today's heavily equipped balsa raft is bigger, has a three times as large sail and will, as opposed to Kon-Tiki, be manoeuvrable by the same techniques as applied by the prehistoric South-American seafarers. The expedition will, supported by the University of Bergen, Norway, look for molecular pollution and document any changes in the sea water since 1947.

The Tangaroa Expedition has been made possible through expensive financial support by sponsors, among them the main sponsors Branding Larvik, Skagen Fondene and AGR - and invaluable help from the Peruvian Navy during the intense building phase. The balsa raft has already before the building started been bought by an investor from Larvik, Norway. The plan is to create a Thor Heyerdahl Centre in his home town, with the Tangaroa raft as a symbol of the heritage he created.

For the last few weeks the working crew has been extended by family and other visitors from Norway. The cabin's roof and walls are made by Totora reef mats from Puno, and the deck has been covered by the same material. Norwegian sail maker Frode Bjøru and his family have a full time job finishing the sails and the rest of us have all been through a session of joining reef mats…

The Tangaroa crew is finally complete! The sixth member is Peruvian Roberto Martin Sala Rey (43). Roberto has a career as an officer of the Peruvian Navy, but has lately worked as a civilian, in anti-corruption work among other things. He is married to Lilly, and they have a seven years old daughter, Daniela. Roberto speaks English very well, has spent a lot of time out on the ocean and knows astral navigation, a skill that may be both interesting and useful during the journey. In addition, he is an extremely nice guy who has already adapted very well into the group.

Tangaroa cooperates with "Proyecto Perù", an orphanage and a school for poor children in the North of Peru, run by a Norwegian foundation and financially supported by Norwegian students giving the income of one day's work every year to the project. Tangaroa brought the school a class set of "Kon-Tiki" books, and by the support of Thor Heyerdahl Upper Secondary School in Larvik, both the orphanage and the school are now connected to the Internet, in order to be able to follow the Expedition through newsletters in Spanish.

When visiting the school and the orphanage in Monsefù this week, Tangaroa coordinator Anne Thorenfeldt and THUSS representative Ingjerd Beate Nyhus Larsen were met by 200 happy kids, welcoming us as if we were old friends. We visited all the classes, saying hello and answering questions, and we were continuously asked to stay in order to teach them English! Unfortunately are the gifts that Ingjerd brought for them still in our container in Lima, but we expect to get them released sometime during this week…

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