KonTiki

KonTiki was the raft used by the Norwegian explorer and writer Thor Heyerdahl in his 1947 expedition across the Pacific Ocean from South America to the Polynesian islands. It was named after the Inca sun god.

Heyerdahl believed that people from South America could have settled Polynesia in pre-Columbian times, although most anthropologists now believe they did not. His aim in mounting the KonTiki expedition was to show, by using only the materials and technologies available to those people at the time, that there were no technical reasons to prevent them from having done so. Although the expedition carried some modern equipment, such as a radio, watches, charts, sextant, and metal knives, Heyerdahl argued they were incidental to the purpose of proving that the raft itself could make the journey. The trip began on April 28, 1947 from Peru. Heyerdahl and five companions sailed the raft for 101 days over 4,300 miles across the Pacific Ocean before smashing into a reef in the Tuamotu Islands on August 7, 1947 which the crew survived.

The original Kon-Tiki raft is now on display in the Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo and now they had also made a movie out of this adventurous expedition.

It came into Norwegian cinema's end of August and Jana, Audrey and I decided to go and see it beginning of September. We had bought tickets for Klingenberg Kino and thought about combining this with a dinner at Tullin's Café where we hadn't been now for a long time.

We weren't able to pre-book a table and so we ended up waiting at the bistro's bar for 45 minutes without a table becoming free for us. However, as the movie was set to start at 20:00 we could no longer wait for a free table and decided to switch to nearby "Jerome's" restaurant which is run by a French and which offers a really good deal for a 2 or 3 courses dinner.

 

Just on time we arrived then at the cinema.
The film being a Norwegian production of course didn't raise up to Hollywood standards, but was kept rather simple. It was ok, but I wasn't impressed, though, by the film. I expected somehow more. It's a film you may watch on TV one evening. However, you get the adventurous spirit and the challenges faced during this expedition.
And well, I have watched another film in Norwegian :-)