Heroism in a hyper world

While my childhood peers had heroes who were faster than speeding bullets, I worshipped a Norwegian marine biologist who got his kicks from building rafts. It was my deepest, darkest secret, something best not to let slip in the playground for fear of being ostracised.

While the other children were immersed in comic books, pretending they were fictional characters with superhuman qualities, I dreamed I was the real-life adventurer Thor Heyerdahl, setting sail for the unknown on yet another flimsy craft.

Heyerdahl, for the uninitiated, made waves in 1947 when he sailed his primitive balsa raft, Kon Tiki, 8,000km from Peru to Polynesia, in 101 days. He did it to prove his theory that Pacific islanders could have descended from ancient South American mariners rather than Southeast Asians.

Then he fired my eight-year-old mind, in 1970, when he took on the Atlantic in a raft made from papyrus. This time, he crossed from Morocco to Central America to test the belief that Egyptian pharaohs could have sunned themselves on the beaches at Cancun thousands of years before American tourists.

In 1978, he made a political statement by burning another raft, Tigris, after sailing it from Iraq to the Indus Delta of Pakistan and finally to the Horn of Africa. He did it to protest against the wars that were raging on all sides at the time.

Heyerdahl died in 2002, at the age of 87, and his theories are frowned on by many anthropologists as unscientific. But his dogged determination to prove his beliefs, even to the point of risking his life, is laudable in the extreme. He was driven by sheer guts and determination, pitting himself for months on end against the elements with few tools of modern-day civilisation to help him get by.

Now, that's still my kind of hero.