Summary: another great time on Bonaire.

We didn't have a car for a lot of the time. I didn't reserve one, not realizing that there was a Digital Dive-Off (or whatever they were calling it) at Habitat, and that so many people came to Bonaire for the Queen's day holiday and stayed for the week. We finally ended up renting a truck from a friend of Dee Scarr's.

We did not do a lot of shore diving, unless you count right off the dock in front of Captain Don's. We did this dive many times, and I don't feel particularly deprived: we saw rays, turtles, tarpon (in small schools - six or more sometimes), baracuda (including one that had to have been nearly 6ft long), many juvie drums, trunk fish, scorpion fish, angel fish, porcupine fish, balloonfish, groupers, squirrelfish, giant schools of bait fish, tangs, grunts, wrasse, and the tiny things, blennies, gobies, etc. right there.

We did a few boat dives too, mostly to Klein divesites. Among the highlights were Divi Tree (where we saw a spotted eagle ray and two turtles, including a very large loggerhead), Sampler, Rock Pile, and Joanne's Sunchi.

We ate out twice: for my birthday we went to Lions Den, and had a wonderful meal. We also went to Pasa Bon Pizza, and had pizza from them again when visiting with Dee Scarr and her husband David. Other than that (and leftovers), we pretty much stuck to Rum Runners, which was quite convenient and consistently good. We also made a couple of trips to Lovers.

We also went to visit Captain Don and Janet at their Kunuku one night (and we are here to attest that Bonairean residents are impervious to the Bonaire mosquito: Don and Janet looked bemused as we slathered ourselves with bugjuice to no avail), and I was privileged to go for a trail ride with Karen Pearson, one of the instructors at Captain Don's, on a Paso Fino. I'm a quarter horse owner, so riding a gaited horse was a treat, and getting to see the other Bonaire from horseback was breathtaking: so harshly beautiful!

One alarming incident: someone came into our room when we weren't there on my birthday, and left this:
. I felt a little violated, but got over it quickly. There were chocolates.

I was using a new camera and housing (a Canon A95 with the Canon housing). Geoffrey was using the Olympus 5050 with Olympus housing.

Rant on:

We were there during the "Digital Shoot-out" so I guess we saw more than the usual bad behavior, but...

We take photographs to document our trips, not to feed our egos, and will skip a photo if it would involve doing harm to the reef or alarming a critter. We like the minimalist approach: we do not take vacation photos to publish, so why lug around all those strobes, lights, etc. especially since the people we see lugging them around are the most egregious reef whackers we've ever seen. Do these people bring that kind of gear to visit New York or London or Rome? No. So why do they all think they're "artistes" under water?

I personally pride myself on my ability to stay off the reef (I dive with only 6 pounds of lead, and use a 63cf tank - I can stay down easily for over an hour) and would rather have a less-than-artistic shot than an imprint of me across a piece of coral.

Rant off.

Anyway, we took a lot of photos, so many that the task of going through them and finding the best has been daunting. Between us, around 2000. I decided to put a few of them up on my Comcast account website. There's a 25MB limit there, so it's a really trimmed down # and they've been reduced down quite a bit too, but you get the gist of it. I annotated a few of the out of the water shots:

http://home.comcast.net/~scamp5/

Susan, Thanks for the trip report and link to your photos. I too hate seeing divers touching everything or laying on the bottom.

A belated Happy Birthday to you.
Glad to hear the chocolates and flowers helped you deal with the unauthorized entry;-{)}

Susan, I thoroughly enjoyed your trip report, especially the stunning photos. Amazing color.

Belated Happy Birthday from another Gemini.

Susan, great pics, thank you for sharing :-) It looks as though the pictures with the img prefix are those you took with the Canon. Yes? They look realy good! Did you do any fixing to the pics are are they as you took them? How did you like the camera. I am going to FL for a week in July and hope to get uw to use my Canon. Any pointers?

Tom, Margarita,
Thanks!
Actually I'm a Taurus, but I'll take the birthday wishes (even if I'd rather throw the birthday away! )

Denise,
Yup, those are the Canon shots. I post-processed some of them with the "underwater.atn" action file for Photoshop, but that wasn't always satisfactory (too purple). The closer shots didn't need any processing, the flash took care of the color. For the most part I might have adjusted levels and color, or just left it alone if I couldn't come up with an image I liked. None of the images were cropped or sharpened, and since they've all been reduced a lot on the webpage they're not really representative of the quality of the image.

I loved the Canon. It's very nearly idiot proof in "Underwater" mode, unless of course you knock it out of underwater mode into slow-shutter mode when you put it into the housing, then don't notice that's what you've done for nearly an entire dive. I checked every time after that, I can tell you!

Susan

Susan, I love your pictures! I agree 100% about staying off the reef. The perfect picture is not worth doing permanent damage to a reef.

Hi Sue, thanks for the report! Your pictures were awesome!!!! Thanks for taking the time to put them all up on the web site!

Darlene, Lisa - Thanks!
Darlene, I included the photos of the decor just for you - I know how much you love Janice Huckaby's paintings!

Thanks for thinking of me Sue! I do love Jan's work. I have no more space left on the walls so I have started an album of her prints!

Susan,

I just returned from Bonaire on May 21st and can't wait to get back. Thank you for the link to your pictures. They are wonderful! My favorite is the one of the school of blue tangs.

I have less then 100 dives under my belt so no picture taking yet. I want my skills perfected before I even try. I have no desire to damage coral or scare fish.

I dove with Dee and David while there and what fun. This is my second time with Dee and she does such a great job of providing information to assist with our adventures.

Once again I want to thank you for the pictures.

Kay,
Did you do the "Touch the Sea" specialty course? I did that my second trip to Bonaire, it was a blast!
You're welcome, and thank you! I liked the one of the tangs too (Geoffrey took that one) - if I'd noticed it earlier I'd have put that one in to the photo contest on Geoffrey's behalf.

(I know I said we don't take photos for publication, but if by some accident we have some come out really nice and that we really like, I'm not above trying for a free trip to Bonaire!)

As it is, the last 2 weeks photo contest winners at Habitat look a LOT like a couple of our photos - the same exact subjects I think too! ;) I guess we just chose the wrong ones to enter (you can only enter 1 each per week).

Yes, I did Touch the Sea in 2004 and 2005 and plan to do it each time I visit Bonaire, which I hope is at least once a year. I call it the fish petting zoo.

I bet the blue tang photo blown up on the right type of photo paper would be magnificent. In fact I saw some of Jake's (webcam guy) wife's paintings at Cinnamon Art Gallery (is that right?) and if she were to paint that it would be gorgeous.

Maybe we will meet in Bonaire some day. Do you know the famous Mary Mueller?

Hi Susan,

it's been busy in my life and I finally got a chance to see your photos!
great shots --

my favorites are of the pelagic tunicates tt 0406 and 0407

thanks for posting the link

Mare

Hi Kay,
I know Mary here, but we've not met in person (I believe... I may be having a brainfart... )

Mare,
That was the oddest thing. There was a feeding frenzy all around those that of course I could not capture on film (the fish were darting in, ripping at it, then darting off again). I only wish the photos came out a bit better.