A twentieth-century Robinson Crusoe, the youthful Thor Heyerdahl spent the year 1936 with his bride, Liv, on Fatu-Hiva in the primitive Marquesas Islands. Undecided about their future, the Heyerdahls wanted to escape civilization and live strictly according to nature. With no medical supplies, they came within inches of losing their lives, but they also found the natural serenity they were seeking.
They built a bamboo cabin; dressed in loincloths; ate breadfruit, coco- nuts, and prawns; made fire by rubbing sticks together; and struggled against insects, rain, and fatal diseases. Almost miraculously, they lived to tell about it about their hazardous inter- island voyages, their idyllic month- long stay with the last surviving Polynesian cannibal, their mixed relations with the islanders, their failures and successes in an entirely natural world.
Fatu-Hiva was a turning point in Heyerdahl's life, for it was there that he began to pick up a trail that would lead to the Kon-Tiki expedition. Ancient stone figures, the presence of such flora as the pineapple, and local legends all pointed to an early migration from South America. At the time, this theory was considered outrageous. Heyerdahl would later prove it not only possible, but likely.
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