Raroia

Date: September 22, 2026

From Makemo it was another overnight sail to get to the atoll of Raroia. Here. we also started out visiting the town and went for a walk. First, we saw this outdoor chapel built of coral rocks:

Just at the outskirts of town is the airport. Félicie standing in front of the terminal building:

On a field next to the airstrip, extra jet fuel was stored in white barrels and the steel tanks behind:

The paved road ended and we continued along a dirt road:

Finally, at the end of the road we found a lovely sandy beach:

Heading back towards town:

The post office with satellite dishes and painted in the obligatory blue and yellow:

We left the village behind and sailed to the other side of the atoll and anchored close to the Tahuna Maru motu aka Kon-Tiki motu. This motu (small island) along with the wole Raroia atoll became world famous in 1947 when Thor Heyerdahl and five other crew (one was Swedish and the rest Norwegian) landed on the motu in the Kon-Tiki raft after a 101 days sail covering 6,900 km across the Pacific Ocean from Peru. The Kon-Tiki expedition was an attempt to prove Thor Heyerdahl's theory that Polynesia could have been colonized with people from South America. While the expedition was successful in showing that the crossing was possible, archaeological, linguistic, cultural, and genetic evidence overwhelmingly support a western origin via the Austronesian expansion from Southeast Asia to Polynesia circa 3000 to 1500 BC.

Our dinghy anchored next to Kon-Tiki motu.

In 2006, the 50 years anniversary of the Kon-Tiki voyage was celebrated by recreating the voyage using a newly built raft, also with a six-man crew including the grandson of Thor Heyerdahl, Olav Heyerdahl. The raft, named Tangaroa, was launched on April 28, the same day as Kon-Tiki and reached its destination 30 days faster than Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki. A plaque commemorating the Kon-Tiki Expedition from 1947 was mounted on a concrete and coral monument:

A lot of birds breed on the motu so the plaque was pretty much covered in droppings:

The motu has become a place that most sailers like to visit and some Norwegian and Swedish boats have left old flags hanging in the trees close to the monument:

This is the view over the outer part of the motu, where the raft stranded and the 6 crew had to walk across and drag up the raft when they arrived. I hope they brought some shoes to walk over the sharp corals:

View from Kon-Tiki motu towards the three anchored sailboats. Amanda is the one on the right: