Raroia

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NASA picture of Raroia.

Raroia, or Raro-nuku, is an atoll of the Tuamotus chain in French Polynesia, located 740 km northeast of Tahiti and 6 km southwest of Takume. Administratively it is a part of the commune of Makemo.

The oval-shaped atoll measures 43 km by 14 km and has a land area of 41 km². A navigable waterway leads to the central lagoon, which has an area of 359 km².^[1] The population as of the 1996 census was 184, with Garumaova the main settlement. Raroia has no infrastructure and its inhabitants live principally on fishing and pearl farming.

[edit] History

Raroia and Takume were called Napaite, "the Twins" (ite, two), by the ancient Paumotu people.

The first recorded European to reach Raroia was Portuguese explorer Pedro Fernandes de Queirós in 1605. It was later sighted again in 1820 by Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen, who named it Barclay de Tolly after the Russian field marshall Michael Andreas Barclay de Tolly.

In 1947 Raroia became famous as the landfall of Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki expedition after its 101-day journey from South America. Later, one of the crew members, Bengt Danielsson, lived there.^[2]

In 1956 Danielsson described the material culture of Raroia as "almost totally Western"...The natives use European tools exclusively, dress in the European way and frequently have such luxuries as radios, bicycles and refrigerators.. ^[3]