Geography
Rapa Iti is located at 27°35′00″S 144°20′00″W / 27.5833333°S 144.3333333°W / -27.5833333; -144.3333333. It is shaped roughly like a Greek final sigma (ς), with a well-protected central bay, surrounded by a ring of relatively high mountains. The whole island appears very much to be the peak of a sinking volcano, with the bay as the caldera. The area of the island is 40 km2 (15 sq mi).
Its main town, Ahuréi (sometimes called Ahurei, Ha'urei or Ha'uréi, latter two also show how it is pronounced), lies on the southern shore of that bay, which is called the Baie d'Ahuréi. A smaller village, 'Area, is located on the northern shore of the bay. The people are Polynesian. Former times' warfare is indicated by 28 extant ridgetop forts. Today Rapa is home to the Tahitian Choir, in which a third of the island's population sing traditional songs.
Although sometimes considered part of the Austral Islands, Rapa Iti and the Bass Islands have a different geological, linguistic and cultural history.
Read more about this topic: Rapa Iti
Famous quotes containing the word geography:
“Yet America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The California fever is not likely to take us off.... There is neither romance nor glory in digging for gold after the manner of the pictures in the geography of diamond washing in Brazil.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Where the heart is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think paltry places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic topography. But here we are; and, if we tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best. See to it, only, that thyself is here;—and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall not absent from the chamber where thou sittest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)