Kon-Tiki2 days at sea due to difficult weather conditions. By then, the rafts had sailed halfway to South America. All crew members were taken aboard a Japanese freighter, and later transported to shore by the Chilean Armada. Expedition leader Torgeir Higraff chose to terminate the expedition to avoid risking the life of crew members. The expedition built and sailed two balsawood rafts: "Rahiti Tane" and "Tupac Yupanqui". The rafts were similar to the "Kon-Tiki" raft built by Thor Heyerdahl in 1947. Like the "Kon-Tiki", "Rahiti Tane" and "Tupac Yupanqui" were built from balsawood transported from Ecuador to SIMA, the Peruvian Army's
Hanau epe explain the alleged ethnic difference between the two groups. Thor Heyerdahl popularised the view that they were a South American indigenous people, who were pale skinned with red hair. Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki expedition was designed to show that migrants from Peru could have reached Polynesia. He believed that the Hanau epe were the earliest inhabitants of the island; they created its unique monuments, which resemble similar sculptures found in the Americas, but were eventually killed off by either the Polynesians or a later wave of migrants from the Northwest coast of America. Wilhelm and Sandoval in 1966 took the view that