We returned to the UK last week from a fantastic two and a half week holiday in Bonaire. We can honestly say it was the best Christmas and New Year’s break we’ve ever experienced – we actually achieved a long-held ambition this holiday – to go diving on Christmas Day! You may have seen us on the reef cam on 25th December – sporting a fetching combo of red Santa Hats and purple octopuses! But I’m getting ahead of myself – our holiday started with an afternoon flight from Birmingham in the UK to Amsterdam on Saturday, 20th December. With the prospect of a seven hour layover at Schiphol Airport, we decided to get the train into central Amsterdam, and, after a couple of false starts managed to track down the superb Thai restaurant we’d first ate at en route to Bonaire in September. The food was as good but this time we ate inside (avoiding the pouring rain) rather than outside in the warm September sunshine.

The midnight KLM flight from Amsterdam was delayed by about an hour - the plane needed a new computer which luckily for us didn’t take too long to locate, install and test. And so, we were finally on the last leg of hour journey to the warm sunshine and ocean of Bonaire. We actually managed to sleep quite well on the flight – so the nine and a half hours or so went by quite quickly, and we were soon checking into our suite at Captain Don’s Habitat. Habitat really feels like a home from home for us – this was our seventh visit – the set-up suits us exactly, and we always enjoy ourselves tremendously and feel very relaxed as soon as we arrive.

After a few hours sleep and our favourite Rum Runners breakfast omelettes we were soon sorting out dive gear lockers and before long we were back in the warm Caribbean Sea – diving the Habitat House Reef – which is always special. We know this reef the best – and before long found the orange seahorse we’d seen in September, along with a small yellow frogfish at Cliff. These bonuses were on top of the many different sorts of morays and fish we also encountered on what was effectively our check out dive.

We normally do a combination of boat and shore dives – this trip we did mostly boat dives. We always find it incredibly difficult to pick out favourites, but Karpata was amazing as usual – we had several magical turtle encounters at this site. All in all we had four twenty minute turtle encounters on this trip – on one dive we spotted one small hawksbill head first down in the coral munching on what must have been a particularly tasty sponge. We waited several minutes for him to turn right-side up – and he then proceeded to pose on the coral for us. It really was like a professional photo shoot! We even managed to get a couple of shots of his head in a Motor Marine II 1:3 macro frame – he seemed to be curious more than anything else. I had another unforgettable encounter on the Habitat House Reef. I was at about 80 feet and noticed a small green turtle swimming just in front of me. He seemed to wait for me to catch up, and then circled around and around me, at least a dozen times. Brian was about fifteen feet above us and flooded his mask he was laughing so much. Eventually my little friend got bored and swam off back towards the Habitat rope – I was decidedly dizzy after pirouetting mid-water so many times!

The Habitat House Reef was also home to a golden tail and a honeycomb moray who shared the same coral head. They were there for the duration of our stay and so must have gotten along pretty well.

Talking about eels, we actually came across five different types on one dive – a huge green, several white spotted and golden tail, our friend the shy honeycomb, and a very large free swimming sharp tailed eel. We also had an interesting dive at Midushi, where Dee Scarr’s husband David had a surprise encounter with a large free swimming green moray:



We had a few interesting ‘bait ball’ encounters, the best of which was at Rappel, where there must have been literally hundreds of thousands of ‘bogas’ (herring-type fish) swirling in the sunlight as they were worked by a selection of jacks, tuna and tarpon.


We were lucky enough to get a few reasonable shots on this trip, and both managed to win the Habitat December Monthly Photo Competition (me (Sue) for film with a juvenile smooth trunkfish and Brian for digital with a bait ball and tarpon). Voting for the overall winners for 2003 is open until Thursday (15th December) evening via the following link:

http://www.habitatdiveresorts.com/bonaire/photo_vote.html

We did one dive to Ebo’s Reef on Klein, in search of turtles, and whilst we didn’t see any (which is quite unusual on this site), we did encounter a sting ray.


We also saw some reef squid and two octopuses on a night dive at Habitat. And of course we encountered Charlie the tarpon and friends and a very friendly snook several times.



Another memorable night dive was on Town Pier with Netto, one of the excellent Dive Guides at Habitat. We saw two seahorses, a frog fish, lots of crabs and colourful sponges and coral, several large morays and even a sleeping turtle.

Our only other non-Habitat shore dive this time was on the wreck of ‘Our Confidence’ and Something Special from the beach at Harbour Village. We did this dive with Max who is Habitat’s Dive Manager, and we must thank Harbour Village’s General Manager Nick Davies for letting us do this dive – Harbour Village is a wonderful 5 star resort – and this luxury extended to our dive. We were met in the car park by a uniformed porter complete with luggage trolley who wheeled all our tanks and gear to the beach. We did the dive – nice wreck (the mast disappearing into the sun provided a particularly nice perspective) and I saw a jack knife on Something Special which is a fish I’ve never encountered before.
And on our return our porter was waiting to accompany us back to Max’s truck in the car park. Truly luxury diving!


As I mentioned above, we did a dive on Small Wall on Christmas Day. Here are our hats and octopuses.

We did an interesting snorkel (made even more interesting by the fact that Brian and I both forgot our snorkels!) at Lac Bay Mangroves with Nick – and saw several juvenile barracuda, plus a couple of huge lobsters which was quite unexpected!

New Years Eve was fun at Habitat, with Moogie’s music, lots of champagne and colourful fire works – including 300,000 fire crackers – very noisy!


As usual we ate several meals at Rum Runners at Habitat – Floris and Nannie now manage this restaurant and the food is really excellent. They presented a very ambitious Christmas Eve/Day menu which was delicious, and we understand that they are about to introduce a new ‘daily’ menu too. We also had really nice dinners at Harbour Village and Cappricio’s, and made the BT Dinner at Gibi’s on 30th December. There must have been over 30 people there and it was great to put names to faces – we met Ellen and Irwin, Stu, Josie and Wally and Eva. We ate lunch out at a few restaurants, and liked Rum Runners, Lion’s Den, Harbour Village and the Lost Penguin. We also tried the restaurant at Buddy’s one lunch time, but sadly were disappointed with this meal.

We had a fantastic time – absolutely the best. We’d like to thank Jack, Suyin, Max and everybody else at Habitat for making it possible, along with Nick at Harbour Village for his generous hospitality and Michael’s Chat’n’Browse which is a brilliant concept for Bonaire. And of course thanks to Jake and Linda for providing this wonderful forum via which we can all share our Bonaire experiences. It was also great to chat to Captain Don at the weekly cocktail party.


And some more pictures






















We were delayed for a few hours going home, but in effect this meant we enjoyed a few more hours in the Bonaire sunshine which was a bonus.

Well PBD has already started – and we’ve booked our return trip for this August/September (and hopefully the Coral Spawning) as a remedy. Counting down already…

More pictures to follow, these are just some of the the digital images…..

Brian & Sue

My husband did a Christmas dive too! Thank-you for the report! Your pictures are amazing! The turtle photos are beautiful.

Brian and Sue

Thanks, for the great report.

Sue (and Brian) great report! I love the turtle pics and the tarpon with the bait ball! Did we capture you on Christmas day with the hats and octopi??? Can't wait for more pics

Tom, is it making you a little anxious???

(Message edited by cyndelee on January 12, 2004)

I loved your trip report and your encounters with the turtles sounded incredible!!! Great pictures!!!

Very nice report, and terrific pictures! Thanks for sharing.

Sue and Brian,

Absolutely AWESOME turtle pictures - that must have been fantastic to have such encounters! The rest of your pictures are also wonderful. Thanks so much for sharing!

Thanks for your report and photos! We encountered a bait ball like that at the Salt Pier one year. It was fantastic hanging there watching the tarpon, jacks, and barracuda 'work' the school. Your beautiful pics brought the memory back. And the turtles! W0W! Can't wait for more.

What a great report and absolutely fabulous photos! Thank you for taking the time to post everything for us to share and enjoy. Carole

Sue and Brian, the pictures and report stir memories that are much better than the frozen northeast of the United States. Thank you for the respite from this weather. Tomorrow- SNOW- and lots of it. YUK

your pictures are super and thank you so much for sharing them with all We leave for a month in Bonaire in 25 days and I can hardly stand it

I am so excited Thank you for your report

Thanks 4 sharing your trip with us. Makes me wanna go back right now...
The pictures are great, especially the grumpy turtle in the coral.

Sue and Brian,

your turtles pictures are amazing. We will be there Saturday.I hope that one of my friend will be able to do some pictures like yours. Thanks for your report!

Sue and Brian - AWESOME report and pics. Made me feel like I was back on Bonaire!!! Now I have PBD all over again!!!

Love the turtle pics and stories!!!

Thanks for sharing it with us!!!

Hi Brian and Sue - Glad to hear you made it home in one piece! Thanks so much for all your friendship and sharing this holiday trip. We had a wonderful time whenever we had the opportunity to dive with you! We were flipping through your really great photos (from that cool camera that is now on my Christmas 2004 wish list!!!) and there you were - Max yelled out - "hey look mom - remember them from the boat" (and we thought he wasn’t paying attention!!) New cards arrived just days ago - no pearls or sharks but Master and Rescue will be fine for now.

Hope to see you on another dive trip - Can't wait to see Brian's next cache of UK dive shirts!

All the best to you in 2004 -
Barbara, Dean, Max and Bridgette

Cynde

Yes this was us. Part II also posted as a new thread.



Brian

Cynde

Yes this was us. Part II also posted as a new thread.



Brian

Pic 137858.jpg is too close. Stop harassing the turtles! Jeeez.

Main Entry: ha·rass
Pronunciation: h&-'ras, 'har-&s
Function: transitive verb
Etymology: French harasser, from Middle French, from harer to set a dog on, from Old French hare, interj. used to incite dogs, of Germanic origin; akin to Old High German hier here -- more at HERE

1 a : EXHAUST, FATIGUE b : to annoy persistently

2 : to worry and impede by repeated raids <harassed>

Jason

You do not know me or what I stand for, if you had bothered to read the report you would have noticed that -

"All in all we had four twenty minute turtle encounters on this trip"

- not exactly what you would expect from harassment is it? Once we gained the turtle's trust we could get close for pictures and if you look at the images the same turtle is repeated.

Having read your previous posts (use search) I think I know a bit about you. I note the word Troll has been used before.

Our family had the pleasure to be on a number of dive boats with Sue and Brian for many dives during their holiday trip this year. At all times they were “the best” of divers in the water ---and out. They are well educated, well certified and very eco friendly divers. On several of the dives that week turtles appeared in between divers and just seemed to hang out for unbelievably long periods of time; they were just going with the flow. They were not being harassed, stressed or any other negative verb that could be used. I happen to know that Brian and Sue, besides being good dive buddies also share camera lenses underwater which keep them close when shooting. The photo with Sue in it was not the product of pressuring some poor turtle into just the right position to get the perfect picture, Brian just happened to shoot the turtle and Sue just happened to be in the right spot at the right time. Sometimes – good luck and providence smile on the eco friendly divers too! So – relax to know they did not harass the turtles or any other marine life. They are return visitors to the island and great ambassadors for tourism on the island. We would be fortunate to dive with them again, any time – any island. They are spectacular folks.