To South America- part one: Kon-Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl. Personification

"We had reached the country where the balsa tree grows and were to buy timber to build our raft."
I think this quote subtly shows Heyerdahl's excitement to begin his expedition.

Imagine spending months planning for something only to find out that at the planned time and place, something has gone wrong, and plan B has to be put in effect. The only problem is that you haven't made a plan B, and you are in a foreign country. This is pretty much what happened to Heyerdahl when he arrived in South America to buy balsa-wood to make his raft.

Heyerdahl and Watzinger flew to South America with a plan that they would go to a lumber yard and buy logs of balsa-wood. However, when they arrived they found that balsa-wood could not be bought from the lumber yards in whole logs. Another problem that the two faced was that they had arrived in Ecuador just after the rains had begun. This caused problems for Heyerdahl's plan to go inland and fell the woods himself because the mud from the rain made traveling from the coast through the jungle impossible. Thinking quickly on his feet, Heyerdahl then devised a plan to fly to a city called Quito that was located on the Andes range and then to come straight down from the Andes to the inland side of the jungle where Balsa trees were located. This plan would bypass traveling through the dangerous, muddy jungle.

The jungles presented their own problems and dangers. the dangers include:

• dangerous mud
• torrential rain
• snakes
• scorpions
• other tropical animals
• head-hunters

Yep, Heyerdahl and Watzinger were warned about head-hunters who would kill to take heads, shrink them, and sell them to tourists. Luckily, Heyerdahl and Watzinger didn't come into contact with the head-hunters.
 However, when in the jungle cutting down balsa trees, Watzinger was bitten by a Kongo ant, which made him sore but was not detrimental to his health.

Heyerdahl and Watzinger along with the help of native Indians were successful in cutting down usable balsa trees. Each tree was named in in honor of Polynesian legendary figures before being cut down completely. a total of twelve mighty trees were cut to use for the balsa raft. The wood was transported downstream to Guayaquil, where Watzinger and Heyerdahl were to part in order to perform assigned tasks to build the raft.

When Heyerdahl was explaining arriving in the forest village in the jeep he said, "Then the jeep had a puncture and went down on one knee." This is an example of personification because jeeps do not have knees.