Sue & Brian return to Habitat Hard to believe that this was our 10th visit to Bonaire and Captain Don’s Habitat. This was a special trip to celebrate Brian’s 50th Birthday, which occurred about half way through the holiday, and also our 28th wedding anniversary, which was the day before we left the UK. Getting there We’d booked the trip on KLM frequent flier miles, and were due to fly out at about 5:00pm UK time from Birmingham to Amsterdam. We got to the airport at about 1:30pm and managed to get on the 3:00pm flight – KLM now depart from Terminal 2 at Birmingham, which has a smaller duty free area which, although doesn’t have the same variety of shops and restaurants as Terminal 1, was much less busy and we managed to buy all of the books and duty free that we needed. We arrived at Schiphol about 5:00pm put our hand baggage in the convenient lockers and took the train into Amsterdam, where we spent a few hours exploring before returning to the airport for our 11:30pm flight to Bonaire. At the gate we met up with our friend Neil Grant who had arrived from London and boarded the flight to Bonaire, which was smooth and we even managed to get some sleep on the flight. We touched down about half an hour before schedule in Bonaire (at about 3:00am), and after collecting our luggage took a taxi to Habitat. Check-in was very easy, and we managed to get a few hours sleep before breakfast. Habitat What can we say about Habitat? We had an absolute blast the whole trip. We always stay in a Junior Deluxe Suite, which suits our needs exactly (airy and bright, lots of space and storage, big balcony, wireless internet access, handy for the dive docks, restaurant, reception, dive and photo shops and car park). The Junior Deluxe Suites are currently being refurbished, with new curtains, quilts and upholstery – the new colour scheme is very effective. Habitat really is a home-from-home for us and we are always made to feel especially welcome – Jack and crew we thank you all and can’t wait to return. This trip was extra special as Brian was the annual winner of the Habitat 2004 Digital Photography Competition, and so about half of the two weeks’ accommodation and diving was his prize. At about 11:00am on our first day Brian, Neil and I did our check-out dive off Habitat’s ‘Baby Dock’, and immediately located the orange frogfish on La Machaca, along with many of the usual suspects – French and Queen Angels, various morays, barracuda and of course Charlie the tarpon and his entourage. We all had cameras – Neil has bought the Sea & Sea Motor Marine II that I inherited from Brian a couple of years ago, and the quest for the weekly Habitat photo competition winner commenced!! Diving Apart from diving the Habitat House Reef, and Town Pier (more of which later) this time we stuck to boat dives – and we saw an amazing variety of marine life. Lots of frogfish (I think more than we’ve ever seen before on a Bonaire trip), 5 seahorses at Witches Hut, many morays (including several viper morays), tarpon, barracuda, turtles, several octopuses – including one very small one on the house reef and a larger one eating a clam at Witches Hut. And of course a very wide variety of reef fish – including several midnight parrot fish, our very first close encounter with a Goliath Grouper at Sampler on Klein, and several reef squid sightings – a few of which were prolonged (i.e. the entire 1 hour dive) and very close. We also saw numerous juvenile fish, especially French and Queen Angels, fairy basslets and spotted drums – one of which was absolutely minute, it must have only been about half an inch long. The water was warm and clear, and although we didn’t see much coral spawning this time – just one boulder star coral head and several brittle stars – we did actually have a few spawning encounters we hadn’t previously experienced - touch-me-not sponges smoking at dusk, a couple of ribbon worms spawning and also fire worms smoking. We also did a couple of very special dives on Salt Pier, but that was part of Brian’s (extended) birthday celebrations and so more of that in the next section…. Brian’s birthday You know how most peoples’ birthday celebrations are restricted to just a single day? Well Brian’s 50th birthday definitely extended into almost a week! The first celebration was the night before the birthday itself, which coincided with the Habitat Welcome Rum Punch Party – Jack had arranged for a wonderful presentation by Moogie and a huge yummy carrot cake (from the Last Bite Bakery – it must of lasted all of 5 minutes!!) complete with fireworks and candles. Brian got to meet Captain Don again, which really made his evening – Don is now sporting a pirate peg leg and is full of beans and we are so glad to see him back to his old self. An extra highlight was that Brian won a massage at the Habitat Spa.
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