Tenerife – Visiting the Thor Heyerdahl Museum

Every ship has a name. Most of the time, that name also has a meaning. As you probably know, our ship is named after the famous explorer Thor Heyerdahl. On Tenerife, we learned more about him and his life.

Our seventh day on the island was filled with a visit of the Thor Heyerdahl Museum, which is officially named Pyramides de Güimar. The field trip began just as the one to the Teide did, a big bus picked us up at the ship and drove us to our destination. Although, in contrast to the first one, there was one person on the bus with us that was not in our group before: the 92-year-old widow of Thor Heyerdahl, Jaqueline Heyerdahl. She was going to accompany us for the visit and was even willing to answer our questions later.

When we arrived in Güimar, our guide Michael welcomed us and led the way to our first stop of the day, the library of the museum. After everyone had found a seat, Clara told us something about the overall life of Thor Heyerdahl and his expeditions in her presentation. We learned about his four big journeys: Kon-Tiki, Ra I, Ra II, and Tigris. Regarding the last one, we had another expert in the room with us. Detlef, our captain and owner of the Thor Heyerdahl, sailed on the Tigris as a young navigator and could answer every question we asked about the expedition in detail.

The part that followed was – in my opinion – the best of the day. We got to interview Jaqueline Heyerdahl. Ruth and Markus, students from our PR project, asked questions we had, and they were filmed by our film project. After questions like how she experienced Thor Heyerdahl, there was one that I remember especially: we asked her if she had some life advice for us. She answered with the words “Do anything that you do with passion. Just do it with passion!”. I think those are well-chosen words for us and pretty much every young person.

When we finished, our tour guide Michael led us to the cinema of the museum. There, we watched a movie informing us about the mission of Thor Heyerdahl, which did not only consist of proving historical theories but also of stopping the pollution of the oceans as well as uniting different nations. Those goals are also chased by our project and the sailing ship Thor Heyerdahl, carrying on the wishes of our name giver. For example, we look extra close on the waste that we produce and try to get in touch with many different people on our journey.

At the beginning of this blog post, I mentioned shortly that the museum is named after some pyramids nearby. We looked at them to finish our tour. When Thor Heyerdahl visited Tenerife in 1990, he saw some stone hills and examined them. He concluded that they were not just normal stones, but ancient ceremonial structures built by the indigenous people of Tenerife. The museum was built around them later.

We ended our visit with an entry in the guest book of the museum and left Güimar with many new information and impressions of the person behind the name of the ship that we are currently living on.