At least I think it was the seventh... I've kind of lost count.

We stayed at Captain Don's Habitat, Villa Suite 101. Lovely! Roomy, full kitchen, large bedroom and living room, and with a gorgeous view from the patio in the back.

I ended up with 4 adopted kitties for the trip: a small all white girl, a small pudgy black boy with a short (for Bonaire cats) tail, a large, muscular black and white boy with some fur missing, and a small tabby with white and gray tiger girl - very pretty. They all hung out with me for the duration - it may have had something to do with the two large bags of Whiskas I went through (I did add most of them to the feeding station bowls) - and I was sad to say goodbye to them. If I didn't already have 3 at home who don't get along, I'd have been tempted...

For a few days, Habitat had a resident crane. The gecko population suffered a bit for it, but it was neat to see him standing poised with only his neck swaying, before darting it forward for his meal.

For meals, we primarily ate at Rum Runners, although the exceptions were almost universally notable:

Gibi's on the first Tuesday we were there, with Darlene, Denise, Tom, Smack, Annie Phelan, Ed and Liz Ginocchio and family, Renee from Renee's Snorkel Trips, of course Gibi, and a number of people who's names I've forgotten - I'm so sorry!

Pasa Bon Pizza: Lisa and Joe make the best pizza I've had in a long while. We went there our first night, tired and buzzed from a long trip in made worse by standing over an hour and a half in the hot sun waiting for our rental car (and we were about fourth in line, sheesh!) We went back again and again - it's really good!

The Lost Penguin: We went there with a couple we hung out with for a few days, Donald and Fiona (from Puerto Rico by way of Scotland and Malta). We dove with them at Angel City, then had a great great burger for lunch. We went back for our final meal on Bonaire after checking our luggage in. Great food, good service, good people!

We were sorry to see De Tuin gone - it was one of our favorite places.

We also ate at Mangos (I can't say I really remember the meal, sorry) and at Garden Cafe. My falafel was good, but Geoffrey's shish kebab was really not - the meat was so tough it was like eating shoe leather.

The highlight of the stay as far as meals were concerned: I'd told Jack Chalk that we were going to be celebrating our 5th anniversary while on island, and he arranged an anniversary dinner at Rum Runners for us that was just incredible, and so amazing that we were both stunned and so didn't record any of it (although we had our camera) for posterity. Bummer! I wish I had written it all down while it was still fresh in my memory, because it was amazing.

There were multiple courses, none of them available on the menu. The main course was a huge steak cooked wonderfully, but we were so stuffed at that point that we both needed doggy bags. Of course, then the dessert presentation was gorgeous: flan on a platter, with four different icecreams or sorbets in ringing it, chocolate sauce dribbled artistically all around, and on the edge of the platter it read "Congratulations, 5 years".

After engulfing the flan and icecream, our brains turned back on and we took a photo of the platter. You can still read the enscription, but the rest of it looks kind of sad

This was just an incredible evening, and thanks again to all who made it happen at Rum Runners, and especially to Jack Chalk, for being such a good friend!

Diving:

We dove a lot right in front of Habitat. We also did Angel City a bunch of times (though I think they should rename it Cucumber City - I never saw so many sea cucumbers!), Andrea II a few times, a night dive at the Salt Pier, and a few boat dives to Klein.

Everywhere, the sea life was abundant. Every time we go back, we see more and more soft corals, and this time was no exception - this after Ivan, too. It was wonderful.

We went with Darlene and Denise to Bongos a couple of times, and wore our purple hats. Denise, Tom and Smack came to Habitat to dive, and Darlene to snorkel, one of those times. It was fun to dive with them all.

We got lots of photos of drums and french angels - they seemed to be everywhere. We even got a few of the juvenile smooth trunkfish (little polka dotted balls) and some halfway decent ones of trunkfish and queen angels, and the usual Bonairean suspects. We didn't see anything out of the ordinary, but then what is ordinary in Bonaire is quite extraordinary so I'm not complaining.

I had a huge number of photos to go through and process. At some point I flung up my hands and decided to try to batch the processing with Photoshop, which was somewhat successful sometimes.

I've put up a webpage with some of them, primarily underwater (though I think a couple of the crane slipped in). None of them have been cropped (though there are a couple that the originals are of high enough quality that they'll benefit from it). I'll probably set up a webpage with land photos at some point too, but for now: http://home.comcast.net/~scamp4

I just realized that I ran out of space on the comcast website - too many photos! (and that's after culling them to about 1/8 of the total, arggh!)

I'm in the process of putting up a subdomain for scamptattoo. You can see the photos at
http://bonaireoct2004.scamptattoo.com/ in about 15 minutes or so. Meanwhile, the link above works, but some of the photos (and good ones, too!) are missing.

The dessert platter, after the devastation :


And our anniversary outfits:

Oh, one thing: the website is not for the bandwidth-impaired. Also, I used Photoshop to generate a slideshow, but since the photos are so large it doesn't work correctly - one of the problems with using any program to do things "automatically", they often don't work right.

You're best off stopping it (press on the little square in between the two arrows) and using the arrows or the thumbnails to look at the photos.

At some point I'll replace the Photoshop setup with one that isn't a "slideshow", and it hopefully will work better.

Susan, nice anniversary outfits, how cute! Congratulations on your 5th. I wish you many many more, always.

I liked your slide show - and yes it hung up occasionally, but the arrows helped, so it was still great to watch :-)

I really need to learn photoshop. Ive been playing with it to clean up some of my pics from the directions posted in another thread. Maybe you could post directions on how to "batch process" in the photography discussion.

Did you like the salt pier at night??? Salt Pier is probably my favorite dive site, but partly because of the beauty as the sun shines down through the pier. I never did it at night.

My very favorite of the pics is one of your juvenile french angels, early into the slide show, great catch ... thanks for sharing!

Susan, it was great to see the pics of you two, thanks for the report!

Love the report! You are NEWLYWEDS..LOL..congrats to you both. I always LOVE seeing you in Bonaire..HUGS

Blue Jean Annie

Susan, I love the report and your underwater pictures are amazing. I love all the angel fish pictures, they are my favorites. Thanks for sharing!

Susan, what a wonderful report and terrific photos! Love the shot of you and Geoffrey, too....great, bright colors!!

I was able to access the first link but the second one said I was "unauthorized". It could be my firewall or my security settings preventing me from accessing it. I will try again later. Ayo. Carole

Carol,
It wasn't you - it was me! I just got back from the barn, and decided to replace the pages with ones that weren't a "slideshow". So after I deleted the slideshow ones, I have to get the new ones up.

Sorry about that. It should be done by 5-5:30 I think.

Oh, by the way: I took the Sony photos (the DSCnnnnn.jpg files) Geoffrey took most of the Olympus photos (the PAnnnnnnn.jpg ones), except he got tired of taking photos so right around the 21st or so, I started using the Olympus. I passed it to Geoffrey a few times, but for the most part those are mine.

Thanks everyone for your kind words. Denise, I know exactly which one you mean - that's one of my favorites too! The great thing about digital, you can just keep taking photos and EVENTUALLY, mostly completely by luck, one turns out a winner!

I wasn't all that thrilled with the Salt Pier night dive, but it wasn't a typical Bonaire dive: we had to go with a divemaster guide, and he had a group. We had to follow him back and forth. There were also other groups there, so it got a little confusing. A couple of guys in our group had never been on a night dive before - they hadn't really even been on a shore dive before for that matter - so they were a bit scary to be around. It was so dark and secluded afterwards (we had all driven in separate cars) and when we got back to Habitat I thought I'd dropped my license there, and we ended up driving all the way back to look.

I finally found it in the truck - it had apparently slid into the seat, and when I looked for it there, fell down and underneath. It was so dark I couldn't see it, and I'd looked there too when we were back at the Habitat. I think it must have shifted around and become more visible in the drive back. What a pain!

The problem with batch processing is that sometimes it goes horribly wrong. Another of the many reasons why you should always save as copies! If I find myself doing the same thing over and over again to every file, I record the action and save it. Once you've done that, you can use your recorded action in batch processing.

Annie, we always love seeing you, too! We missed Mags, though! Hopefully we'll be back again in late April/May - it looks pretty likely, as Geoffrey starts a full time (as opposed to contract) job tomorrow.

Thanks again, everyone!

Carole, Sorry for misspelling your name!

Susan, what a great collection of photos! I feel as tho I am diving Bonaire right now as I watch them go by!!

Don't worry about the name spelling....it's only a name! LOL. Thanks for noticing, tho.

Thanks so much for letting us enjoy your sites and pics. I find viewing great photos of Bonaire to be very relaxing and therapeutic, too! Ayo. Carole

Susan, thanks for your report and lovely pictures! I really enjoyed it! I had to laugh when I read about "your" kitties, somehow me too always end up buying cat food when I'm on vacation, lol

What wonderful pictures! We are going to visit Bonaire for the first time in February. We also have an Olympus camera that has only been used underwater in Roatan, Honduras. We now have upgraded to Olypmus 4040 and an 5050 (still need to get a housing for the 5050). I was wondering if you had any hints on settings on your camera to get the great pics????? Our pics of Roatan where good, however many were dark and/or really green colored. Had to do lots of editing of pics. Took forever!!!! Any hints would be appreciated.

Hi Sue and Geoffrey! Great report and totally awesome pictures!!!!! Great job! I too loved your anniversary outfits and it sounds like you had a great evening to celebrate thanks to Jack. See you soon!!! Geoffrey is that the drum that I nearly drowned trying to get pictures of?

Hi Rachelle,

I'm not really sure about the settings for the C5050 - Geoffrey set up a "My Mode" on the camera with presets for underwater photos based on information he found on a webpage (I don't know off the top of my head which one). After that, we basically did point and shoot, though I zoomed in occasionally. For the color - I processed all of them through Photoshop, because we don't have any filters for the camera. For some, I only did auto-levels and auto-color; for others I downloaded and ran an Underwater "action" available on the Photoshop website Underwater action

Darlene (The Snorkeling Queen!) I'm not sure if that's the same drum, but it might be!

Susan - great report!!

I just glimpsed at the pice - need to have more time to really go through them. I do love that midnight parrot fish - I find they are so hard to get a picture - because they are too busy running away from you!!!

Love your anniversary duds!!!

Thanks for the link!!

Thanks Mary! I know - between the midnight parrot fish and the cowfish and trunkfish, it's enough to give a diver a complex!

Well gee,guys, are you telling them what pretty fish they are and how much you love them?

OMG, I think I just suggested that Mary needs to talk MORE!

You're right though, some of those midnights just don't want to talk to ANYBODY.

Nice island threads Susan.

Thanks, Seb!

About the kitties - Annie Phelan mentioned in another thread how nice they are to have around at Habitat, Lions Dive, etc.

I'm not sure they're "officially" supported but it's really nice to get back to the room and have a hungry little purr machine outside the door waiting. They are much more grateful for what they get than my spoiled brats, too.

I know the instructor Karen at Habitat buys food for them out of her own pocket, so it's always appreciated when the feeding stations are supplemented (as long as people don't put leftovers that are going bad or wet food that attracts bugs). Karen and I also share a love of horses (she has Paso Finos) and we often talk about them, and about the dificulties in getting food for them on Bonaire.

Here's another sweet story from this past trip:

Karen is married to Bud, the man who is usually working at Sanddollar Grocery. When I went in to buy the last bag of cat food, I talked with Bud a bit, just chit-chat. When I went to leave, he said "Have a nice day!" and I said "You too!"

He replied, "How can I help it? It's always a nice day, married to Karen!"

I told Karen this later, and I think I actually saw her blush. She smiled and looked down and got suddenly really busy filling tanks.

Hi Susan,

First - Congratulations on your 5th Wedding Anniversary and love your outfits, very appropriate. That was very nice of Jack getting the dinner and all for you guys.

Thanks for the report, I always enjoy reading them since I have not been to Bonaire and each time there is something new and exciting that has happened to some one.

Karen and Bud are lucky to be married to each other, that was just beautiful what he said about Karen.

Take care, Elvira

Thanks, Elvira! We may not be as newly-wed as Kelly and her Kitten, but we're pretty happy. I thought getting a matching dress to Geoffrey's shirt would be cute, goofy and fun - and it was a blast!

It was exceptionally nice of Jack, and of the Rum Runner's staff - I can't thank them enough. But it's just another example of why we love going back there, and back to Bonaire - we feel truly welcome!

Karen and Bud are both special people too, and I feel that I've been enriched, meeting them and getting to know them a bit.

There's something about Bonaire - it inspires people to be (dare I say it?) nice, sweet, kind, helpful, decent, civilized... it must be in the water.

Susan, It was a pleasure to finally meet Geoffrey and yourself during our stay. Congratulations to you on your Fifth Anniversary. I wish you many happy returns of the day (they should all be celebrated on Bonaire).

I have enjoyed your photos. It was enjoyable for me to dive with you folks at Capt. Don's. O.K., Thanks for inviting us.

Love the outfits by the way:-{)}