Mangaia

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Mangaia is one of the 15 Islands that comprises the Cook Islands, and belongs to the southern group.

Mangaia (traditionally known as Auau Enua, which means terraced) is the most southerly of the Cook Islands and the second largest, after Rarotonga. Geologists estimate the island is at least 18 million years old, making it the oldest island in the Pacific. It rises 15,600 feet (4750 m) above the ocean floor. It has a central volcanic plateau and, like many of the southern islands in the Cooks, it is surrounded by a high ring of cliffs of fossilised coral, called the makatea, in this case 200 feet (60 m) high.

Mangaia (pronounced ManEyeUh) - is the second largest island in the Cook Islands. Mangaia is the southernmost of the Cook Islands, located a little over a hundred miles (about 200 km) SouthEast of Rarotonga, just north of the Tropic of Capricorn.

29/Mar/1777 Mangaia in the Cook Islands discovered by Captain James Cook on his fourth voyage to the Pacific Source : www.captaincooksociety.com/
The native population is adamantly protective of their island, which has four separate communities. Their origins go back to when the forbears believed that they came from the sea: MANGAIA-NUI-NENEVA, which means the 'temporal power monstrously great'. They fought fifty-four wars over this title.

Now, the island is also called AHU AHU, meaning 'terraced' representing the fossilized coral surrounding the land. During the 1980's, a juice processing plant for pineapple operated very successfully and that extended to a distillation plant for the production of pineapple liquor or ANANAS.

Today, a vanilla plantation is there, papaya is exported and their special kind of Taro or Mamio is grown and exported throughout the Pacific. Tourists are welcomed on the island and arrangements for accomodation and transportation are readily available from Rarotonga.

kiaorana.com/mangaia.html

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cook_Islands