Rarotonga is a very popular tourist destination with many resorts, hotels and motels. The chief town, Avarua, on the north coast, is the capital of the Cook Islands. The volcanic island of Rarotonga stands over 14,750 feet (4,500 meters) above the ocean floor. It is 32 km (20 miles) in circumference and has an area of 67.19 km (26 square miles). At a depth of 4,000 m (13,000 ft) the volcano is nearly 50 km (31 miles) in diameter. Te Manga, at 658 m (2,140 ft) above sea level, is the highest peak on the island. The island is surrounded by
St. Pierre Island St. Pierre Island St. Pierre Island is a raised reef island west of Providence Atoll and part of Farquhar Group, which belongs to the Outer Islands of the Seychelles. It has a distance of southwest of the capital, Victoria, on Mahé Island. St. Pierre Island bears the name of one of Captain Dechemin's ships, who visited the island on 6 June 1732. In former times, much of the island was covered with a "Pisonia grandis" forest, in which large numbers of seabirds nested. The coral rock was thus covered with guano. The guano, and since the 1950s also the rock