Kon-Tiki expedition was able to cross the Pacific Ocean on the balsa raft from Peru to Polynesia. A French seafarer, Éric de Bisschop, committed himself in a project he had had for some years: he built a Polynesian raft in order to cross the eastern Pacific Ocean from Tahiti to Chile (contrary to Thor Heyerdahl's crossing); the "Tahiti-Nui" left Papeete with a crew of five on November 8, 1956. When near the Juan Fernández Islands (Chile) in May 1957, the raft was in a very poor state and they asked for a towing, but it was damaged during the operation and had
Eduard Ingris Eduard Ingris Eduard Ingriš () (February 11, 1905 – January 11, 1991) was a Czech-American composer, photographer, conductor and adventurer. Born in Zlonice in Bohemia (then-Austro-Hungary, now Czech Republic), Ingriš left Czechoslovakia in 1947 for South America, living in Brazil and Peru. In 1955 and 1959 he organized the Kantuta and Kantuta II raft voyages and sailed across the Pacific, in similar style to Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-tiki. While Ingriš' travels spanned the globe and his talents led him through several careers, his first love was always music. He wrote the first arrangement of the famous "Beer Barrel Polka", after Jaromír