Raroia
NASA picture of Raroia Atoll
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 Raroia
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| Geography | |
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| Location | Pacific Ocean |
| Coordinates | 16°01′S 142°26′W / 16.017°S 142.433°WCoordinates: 16°01′S 142°26′W / 16.017°S 142.433°W |
| Archipelago | Tuamotus |
| Area | 359 km2 (139 sq mi) (lagoon) 41 km2 (16 sq mi) (above water) |
| Length | 43 km (26.7 mi) |
| Width | 14 km (8.7 mi) |
| Administration | |
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France
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| Overseas collectivity | French Polynesia |
| Administrative subdivision | Tuamotus |
| Commune | Makemo |
| Largest settlement | Garumaoa |
| Demographics | |
| Population | 233 (2012) |
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. The population as of the 2012 census was 233. The town of Garumaoa is the main settlement. Raroians live principally on fishing, copra cultivation, and pearl farming.
Raroia and Takume were called Napaite, "the Twins" (-ite, two), by the ancient Paumotu people.
The first recorded Europeans to reach Raroia were those of the Spanish expedition led by the Portuguese explorer Pedro Fernandes de Queirós on 14 February 1606. The island was charted as La Fugitiva (the fugitive in Spanish). It was later sighted again in 1820 by Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen, who named it Barclay de Tolly after the Russian field marshal Michael Andreas Barclay de Tolly.
In 1947, Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki raft arrived in Raroia after its 101-day journey from South America. Later, one of the crew members, Bengt Danielsson, lived there and studied the economy and the society. He wrote some books about Raroia, notably his thesis Work and Life on Raroia (Uppsala, 1955). In his 1952 book Raroia: Happy Island of the South Seas, he observes, "The Raroian peace stems from the fact that the people have no material anxieties and no other object in life than just to live" (Danielsson, 294).
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