Bora Bora, French Polynesia

Bora Bora is truly a paradise. We chose to go on two excursions. In the morning, we departed the pier on a snorkel boat. Our captain and his mates - all Polynesian- sang us to our snorkel site. They all had wonderful voices and accompanied the songs on ukuleles.

Once at the reef, we all entered the water to swim with Manta rays and sharks. The sting rays had been de-barbed but none of us could figure out how they could keep track of the "neighborhood" rays vs. rays with their stingers still intact. The rays were very friendly, used to being fed, and, once we were over our initial fear since they were literally underfoot and in your face, we petted them and swam with them peacefully. All the underwater photos are courtesy of Anna in destination services who kindly shared all her GoPro files with us.

One of the guides picked this out of the water....called it Bora Bora's iPhone 6

The sharks were black tipped sharks and they allegedly have no interest in humans. We kept our distance, not wanting to encounter a rogue shark who hadn't read the rule book! At one point, a neighboring tour boat was feeding a group of sharks. They started to circle and swim fast. I recalled movies of shark feeding frenzies and I got a bit spooked and high tailed it out of the water. It was hard to know whether these sharks could differentiate between dead fish bait and live human bait!

Our next stop was to the edge of the reef to the coral gardens. Imagine technicolor coral with small fish swimming about - blues, purples, pinks, magenta, chartreuse. This was the most amazing swim.

Finally, our guide calling us in from the reef for our return to the pier!

After a quick bite to eat, 13 of us gathered for a catamaran sail around Bora Bora. Our French skipper and his Polynesian first mate, Lily, took us around the lagoon, fed us tropical fruit, and let us snorkel off the back of the boat.

The highlight, by far, was when Lily brought us to the front of the catamaran, distributed sarongs, and taught us to dance...first the girls, then the boys. Once we sort of mastered the steps we sailed around our ship anchored in the harbor, music blaring while performing for our shipmates who clustered on the balconies. It's fortunate that there is no photographic documentation (blackmail) of our little performance!

Our sail away was magical, "Bali Hai" playing on the ship speakers, outrigger canoes following us and bidding us farewell.

We had the most perfect day.