Blue Lagoon Resort

Blue Lagoon Resort exists for one of diving's holy grails: Truk Lagoon, where Operation Hailstone sank more than forty Japanese ships in February 1944, leaving the world's greatest concentration of wreck dives in warm, sheltered water. The resort spreads through a magnificent coconut grove on the southern tip of Weno—itself a former wartime seaplane base, with relics still scattered among the palms—and its long-established in-house dive operation runs daily boats to the Fujikawa Maru, Shinkoku Maru and the rest of the ghost fleet.

Rooms in the low two-storey wings are simple, spacious and air-conditioned, with lagoon views through the palms from the better categories; ongoing refurbishment keeps them comfortable rather than fashionable, which suits the clientele. Evenings gather at the waterfront restaurant and bar, where dive logs are compared over fresh sashimi from the lagoon's tuna and cold beer as the sun drops behind the reef islands.

Chuuk beyond the gates is poor and infrastructure basic, so the resort's self-contained grounds—beach, jetty, gardens, generators—matter. Non-divers can snorkel shallow wrecks, tour wartime caves and simply settle into island time. As the historic and practical heart of Truk diving, Blue Lagoon remains the way to do it.