A dogged adventurer follows his dreams

MANY people only dream of travelling the world in search of adventure and life-changing experiences. Thor Heyerdahl was a modern-day explorer who actually lived that dream to the fullest, with many of his exploits recorded on film and in print - in exhilarating detail.

His most famous journey, aboard a primitive raft from Peru to Polynesia, is the subject of Kon-Tiki, a film that chronicles an astounding achievement while also showing how stupendously brave and foolhardy he and five fellow adventurers were.

Big ideas and youthful enthusiasm can only bring you so far but Heyerdahl, a Norwegian ethnographer who spent years on a remote island in French Polynesia before World War Two, was determined to prove - contrary to popular theory - that pre-Colombian migrants from Peru could have sailed across the Pacific from East to West and settled in Polynesia.