When Eric awoke he was still sick, but feeling much better than he had the previous two days. Christi awoke sick. We were planning to leave over the weekend, so we headed into town to check out with the officials. Check out was quick and easy since all the paperwork had been done in Papeete. We got lunch at the pizza place. We got a tuna pizza, which was good. It had more cheese than most of the other pizzas we have gotten. They tend to be sparse with the pizza toppings out here.

There was a hair salon next to the pizza place, and Christi decided to get her haircut. She had been reluctant to do so here, worried about a miscommunication with someone who does not speak much English. She envisioned herself asking for shoulder length and walking out with a buzz. But she was four months overdue for a haircut, and her hair had turned into Medusa’s. She was desperate enough to take the gamble. She looked through a book of haircuts, selected one, pointed to the picture, and prayed. The hairdresser did a fabulous job and Christi’s hair looks great. Christi highly recommends Coiffure Sous Le Vent to anyone traveling to Bora Bora, and she is reasonably priced, too.

For dinner, we went to the famous Hotel Bora Bora, the first hotel on the island. We figured it would be expensive since it is a nice hotel, and it may be one of the most expensive places we have ever eaten. It was very French in that it was small portions of high quality foods. But these portions were extra teeny tiny, which is not a happy combo with extra super expensive. The bowl of soup was $25 American and may be one of the smallest cups of soup we have ever been served. We got asparagus coconut soup (hmmm”¦. More ideas for the coconut still left), scallops, lamb, and crepes suzette. The food tasted great, but not great enough to justify the price/portion size.

We were seated on a balcony overlooking the ocean. Below us, on the beach, a couple was having a romantic dinner on a table in the sand. As we were getting up to leave, we saw that a private performance was beginning. A Polyneisan man dressed in a pareu wrapped like boxer-briefs was holding two batons with fire at each end of the batons. He was doing tricks with the batons throwing them in the air, twirling them, etc. We went down to the beach to watch. He dropped the batons in the sand a few times, but even so, his performance was impressive. Unfortunately, we had forgotten the camera. We would have liked photos of him. What is ironic was that Eric had just mentioned the day before that he was surprised we hadn’t seen any flaming baton performances in French Polynesia. You see them a lot in Hawaii.