Rota

Rota is the southernmost island of the Northern Marianas and the quietest, a raised limestone island of terraces and forest with one village at Songsong beneath the flat top of Wedding Cake Mountain. It has no resort strip and almost no traffic. The As Nieves latte stone quarry above the village holds shafts and capstones abandoned half cut, the clearest picture anywhere of how latte stones were made. Tonga Cave opens behind Songsong, and the Swimming Hole on the east coast is a pool in the reef flat that fills with surf. The forest shelters birds lost elsewhere in the Marianas.