It is our last day in Bora Bora (sniff). We took a trip around motu Toopua to complete our explorations. At the northwest end of Toopua is motu Tapu. It is a private island (I believe owned by a hotel or two). The area between Tapu and Toopua is a popular anchorage. A little out in the open for my tastes but beautiful and flush with white sand for solid anchoring.

We stopped in at Tapu to play around in the water a bit. This is the island where we were married and so Hideko felt it appropriate to represent my wedding ring to me. I lost the original jumping off of a waterfall in Grenada (I never should have let that crazy guy Razmig talk me into that). Now the new ring is as official as the first. We walked around the island a bit but were politely asked to leave by the gardener (it is a private island). With that we set off back to Toopua.

On the way we saw a Lagoon 470 in the anchorage. It was Wakamizu! We knocked on the hull and Nirai appeared. It was great to see him again. He caught us up on their travels and we did the same. Su San and family were out and about in the dinghy. It was unfortunate that we would be leaving tomorrow without a real chance to catch up.

Our next stop was the Bora Bora Lagoon Resort and Spa. This was the last of the big hotels that we had yet to check out. Sure we love the undisturbed nature and the away from it all places, but there isn't really a lot of that in Bora Bora. Bora Bora is THE resort destination in French Polynesia. Go anywhere but the society islands if you want to get away from high density tourism.

The big hotels of Bora Bora are interesting in and of themselves though. They have lovely gardens, fantastic swimming pools, (typically) great food, and unique ways of integrating with the lagoons and motus around them. Many of these hotels are great architectural and landscape design achievements and we enjoy them for just this.

The Bora Bora Lagoon resort and Spa is very nice. The dock is unfortunately on the windward side of Toopua and it is pretty breezy there most of the time. As is often the case you have to be careful tying up because one side is very shallow.

The resort itself is starting to show its age. It was the premier resort when it opened and so there is still much to recommend it. The lunch place is a pool side bar but the food is very good and the pool is lovely. The grounds are covered with picturesque Polynesian gardens and ponds covered in lilies. The Spa is a big tree house nestled back in the gardens and they have tennis courts, sail boat, kayak and wind surfer rentals, along with all the rest.

As we returned to our dinghy we saw Su San from Wakamizu. We noticed the other dinghy at the dock when we tied up but it didn't look like Wakamizu's. They said the same thing about ours. We had both changed dinghies in Panama City and almost missed each other because of it. It was great to catch up with them if only for a few minutes on the dock.

With Toopua and a visit to the BBLRS completed we had only missed the Pearl Beach resort, which is isolated on its own motu just north of the pass. We were quite satisfied with our stay in Bora Bora regardless. We will always love this beautiful island and its amazing lagoon.