Page 34 - Insights Into The Scriptures - The Jaredites

and he failed. The boat was about a hundred miles from the Caribbean
islands when it started to break apart, and they had to be rescued.
However, for Ra II, Heyerdahl hired some men from Peru, where they built
boats on Lake Titicaca. With their increased skill over the builders who
used ancient Egyptian images as their guide, Ra II made it across the ocean
with no mishap [15].
I had my own encounter with a reed boat on Lake Titicaca. I had
the chance to join the faculty from Brigham Young University - Idaho for
an excursion to Peru. We visited many places, including Nazca, Machu
Picchu, Cusco, and many other areas. When we were at Lake Titicaca, we
took a motorboat out to visit the floating islands.

The books about Peru said that visiting the floating islands was like
stepping back in time hundreds of years. I had always thought the floating
islands dated way back to ancient times. However, as I studied about them,
I found out that the South American natives created them to escape into the
lake to avoid the Spaniard’s persecution and enslavement. Still, to step
onto the islands, back to a time of centuries previous, was a fascinating
opportunity.
We chartered a boat to make the trip out to some of the islands.
Because of the altitude, many in our group could not make it on the boat
and instead had to stay in the hotel near the oxygen.

We scheduled to visit three islands. When our boat landed at the
first one, and I stepped from the boat onto the island made of reeds, it gave
me the sensation of stepping onto a firm waterbed. The reeds gave some
under my weight but quickly bounced back as I moved on. See Figure 15.

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