Pre-Columbian rafts voyaged as far as Mexico and introduced metallurgy to the civilizations of that country. Some scholars and adventurers of the 20th and 21st century have asserted that the rafts and their crews journeyed thousands of miles across the Pacific to Polynesia, most notably Thor Heyerdahl who reached Polynesia on the Kon-Tiki raft. Several other people and groups have also built rafts based on prehistoric models and undertaken trans-Pacific voyages. Balsa is the Spanish word for raft. The use of rafts for commerce on the coasts of Peru and Ecuador, from northern Chile to southern Colombia, continued until the late 19th
Thor Heyerdahl Upper Secondary School national upper secondary courses of study or programmes, only agriculture is instead taught at another upper secondary school, "Melsom videregående skole" in Stokke. The school building covers an area square and has of instructional space, including 320 classrooms, of workshops, a six-hall arena space seating 4,000, three auditoria seating 45–180 people, and a professional kitchen. The library is named Fatu Hiva after the Polynesian island on which Thor Heyerdahl spent his honeymoon in the 1930s. 11% of Thor Heyerdahl Upper Secondary School students speak a language other than Norwegian at home. The school is a focus school for the "Nasjonalt