Folk Festival

Posted on August 1, 2011 by debbie

As we have said, we have lists for EVERYTHING! Every summer, we attend the annual Edmonton Folk Music Festival.  http://www.edmontonfolkfest.org/  It is a 4 day event and all we do for those 4 days is eat, sleep and folk fest.  Organization is the key.  Our Folk Festival packing list is now listed under the Packing List Menu item.

I have grouped the items on the list so they make a bit more sense – food, clothes, important stuff (like tickets) and other stuff.  Murray and I each carry a backpack stuffed to the limits with food, stuff and mostly clothes.  This is what our list looked like after I did the initial pack.

There are items on the list that we do not always take  – camera, tape measure, bug spray, parking pass and hiking boots. We always take the rain gear and the warm layers.  The rain gear is indispensable as it can be beautifully sunny in the morning and pouring rain by evening. Sitting on the side of a hill until midnight can get chilly, so long underwear, fuzzies, mittens and touques come in handy.

Our dining room looks like disaster zone during the folk fest.  We gather all this stuff and lay it out on the floor between the living room and dining room. Each day we pack it up and each day, when we get home, we unpack most of it.  I even undress in the dining room each night and leave my warm clothes there, so they are ready to be packed again in the morning. This ensures that nothing is left behind.

A few years ago, Murray and I drove into the garage extra late one night.  Knowing we had to unpack, get up early the next morning, repack, and then head to the line up for gate placement tickets, Murray turned to me and said, “Why don’t we just sleep right here in the car.”

See you on the hill!

Posted in Planning and Packing, Western Canada | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The New Camera

Posted on July 30, 2011 by murray

It’s done. We have spent the last couple of weeks researching cameras and underwater housings trying to decide what will serve our purposes the best. We started out looking at things in a random fashion, worked on selection criteria as we went and narrowed it down to two choices by the end. The two cameras it came down to were the SeaLife DC1200 with its own housing and the Canon S95 with an Ikelite housing.

When we arrived home from Bonaire with our now defunct Canon A 620 camera and our Canon waterproof housing we thought we might be able to find a replacement for the camera and just continue on with the housing. The camera has long since been discontinued so we got on the internet and found several used and refurbished ones. The price was right so we prepared to buy a couple of them to last us a while.

Debbie thought before we jumped into the purchase of second hand equipment, we should maybe test the housing. We cleaned it up, thinking that maybe it was a grain of sand or hair on the seal that caused the leak. Then we put the empty housing in the kitchen sink with a weight on top and left it for a couple of hours. No leak. Our son suggested that we test it in the local dive (as in diving board, 5M deep pool) tank. So we rigged up a tether and weight system and Debbie took it over to the pool and submerged it. It leaked. We talked and decided that it would not be worth it to trust the housing even if the replacement cameras were cheap. We can save the cost of the cameras, plus the technology has advanced in the last few years, so we might as well put that money towards an up to date model.

We needed a starting point so our first research revolved around the SeaLife DC1200. This camera was developed specifically for underwater photography and had good reviews. It is a good camera with lots to say for the underwater component of use. I particularly like the fact that the case has a rubberized coat that I think would protect it against bumps and bangs like the one that was the demise of our last housing. (See Camera Housing Update) The cost of this camera is $500 to $600. The controls on the housing are suppose to be easy to use both on land and underwater. The number of preset underwater settings is numerous which allows for many different situations and should make for good pictures, if you can master all of them.

The two things that may have dissuaded us are, first, the fact that after we analyzed the usage of our future camera and decided that most of the time it would be used as a land camera and the big advantage to the SeaLife is that it was developed as an ‘underwater’ camera. That is not to say that it would not function well on land, in fact the reviews indicated that it did preform quite well out of the water, but it was developed for use underwater, which means that the default design would have been to underwater preference. Second, was the fact that there was not a camera in town that we could handle. It is a specialized product and it would be expensive for shops to keep a stock on hand, so even the dive shops special order the product which means we would have bought it sight unseen.  This was the first camera we looked at and was still on the list when we had narrowed our choices to two.

Doing our due diligence, we expanded our search to land cameras for which underwater housings were available. I started by visiting the B & H camera website and finding out what housings were available. This took some work as there are many housings from several different companies for several different types of cameras. We knew we were not going to buy and DSLR so that eliminated a good number of choices. Then I made a executive decision and narrowed the camera brands to Nikon and Canon. Both brands Debbie and I had used before to good success. That narrowed the selection again and I started noting the cameras that have housings available. Canon has its own housings and there are several housing brands like Ikelite and Fantasea that house multiple brands of cameras. Again an executive decision and we narrowed our search to Canon and Ikelite.

Debbie started to look into the cameras on the list I had made. This was to be her camera so she was the one that had to make the decision. She did not know Nikon and was quite familiar with Canon so her search started there. We short listed 4, only 2 of which we could view at the local camera mecca, McBain. The Canon G12 and the Canon S95 were the cameras we could see and handle.

The G12 was a camera that had some features that would be of interest to someone that had been used to using a SLR. Most of the controls were accessed by dials and levers. There is also a viewfinder, although not through the lens, which is something that Debbie likes when she takes pictures. It has a slightly larger sensor than most point and shoots that would make for better clarity on large photos and it has the capability of 5 x optical zoom.

The S95 is a much smaller camera, a plus in Debbie’s list of criteria. It has a large 3″ screen on the back. The zoom is only 3.8 x optical but has a f2.0 aperture available in wide angle mode. The big thing in my books is that the camera shoots RAW. Pictures shot in RAW mode can be manipulated to a much greater degree in Photoshop and the like. So, if you do not choose the correct camera settings in the field you can make adjustments at home on the computer.

Back on the internet. Debbie finds nothing but good reviews for the S95. It is the correct size, does everything she wants and more, the only thing and it is a small detractor, is that it does not have a viewfinder.

I start the research on the best housing for the camera. I think that the Ikelite is probably the best constructed and could be the best bet although it is twice the price as the Canon. So we have made some sort of a decision.

Then I noticed that the Ikelite housing has an odd mounting configuration on the base. It has two screw mounts instead of the industry standard of one. We own a Sealife strobe that mounted to our last Canon housing with no trouble at all. My next task was to follow up on whether or not the strobe will fit on the Ikelite housing. Negative. The person at Ikelite informed me that Ikelite uses housing mounts that are unique and do not even use the same threads as a standard tripod mount. He quite honestly was not that helpful or did he seem to have the time to help. He did suggest a company, Ultralight, that may have an adapter that would unite the two items. The lady at Ultralight was even less helpful, suggesting that the SeaLife strobe was junk and she didn’t really have time for what we wanted but did suggest a system that would help. It was a mere $220 on top of the expensive housing and we would have to discard 1/2 of our $500 strobe just to make it fit. You can see where this is heading.

We have used a Canon housing to great success before. The only time we had trouble is when we were shore diving and up to now 99% of our dives have been boat dives so what the heck, let’s go with the Canon.

The Canon housing has one oddity, the dial that operates the ring around the lens will be on the same side of the housing that our strobe will be mounted, so it may be a bit of trouble to access, but we find underwater is a lousy place to start making camera adjustments and we try to have everything set up before we even put the camera into the housing. That means the location of the dial should not be that annoying.

There is a great range of prices on the net.  Especially if you do not limit your choice of venues to your own country. The best prices I could find for both the camera and the housing were at B& H in New York. My big concern is that there is always a hassle importing stuff from the States into Canada. As soon as you put in a Canadian address on the website order form, the shipping charges  become totally unacceptable.

I called Canada Customs and asked how much the duty is on digital cameras. The answer, 0%, if the camera was a consumer digital model. There is duty on professional models and some specialty items but not on point and shoots. Customs also informed me that if I had paid a fee for the duty and there was no duty on the item I should be able to apply for a refund.

Then I phoned the courier companies and asked how come they charged so much when there was no duty. Their reply was, they did not and it was the seller who was charging the extra. I phoned the seller and they said it was the courier companies that asked for the payments. Where does that money go? At least the seller told me that he would ‘look in to it’, whether he does or not, I may never know.

I did find a way around the prepayment of duty, brokerage fees and the like. I have an account with Fedex. If you phone B&H and place your order over the phone instead of  over the net, they can type in your account number and you will be charged for the courier rate only. You will have to pay GST and duty if it applies, but you will be billed directly by Fedex to the exact amount rather than some estimated amount that does not relate to anything where the money ends up in either the seller’s or the courier’s pocket.

The order has been made. We have purchased a Canon S95 camera and a Canon WP-DC38 waterproof housing. As far I can make, it has left Newark and is winging its way towards Edmonton. We’ll keep you updated on how well it preforms.

Ciao

Posted in Bonaire, Planning and Packing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Keeping the trip alive

Posted on July 26, 2011 by debbie

We have been back for two weeks now and it feels like we were never away. Laundry is done and put away, suitcases are put away, everything is put away. Pictures are culled, photoshopped and posted. How do I keep the trip alive?

To keep the trip alive, I use my favorite photos as desktop backgrounds. I re-lived our China/Tibet trip for months – actually up to today! I have picked out my favorite pictures from Bonaire and they are set up to cycle through my desktop background.  Here are a few of my favs.

Life in the Aquarium

Our friend Mr Fish (swam with us for most of a dive)

And this is my most favorite…….

Trunkfish

 

Posted in Bonaire | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Bonaire Photos!

Posted on July 23, 2011 by debbie

Spotted Drum

We have culled and readied our Bonaire photos and they are now on display under the “Photos” menu item. Enjoy!

Posted in Bonaire | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Bonaire Unpacking

Posted on July 21, 2011 by debbie

While unpacking, I discovered a few items in my bag that I did not use in Bonaire and a few items that I want to comment on.

I took a small purse, for evenings, and did not use it.  I actually went without one a lot as Murray always had money, and there were evenings that I didn’t think I needed to carry anything. We took a mesh bag to carry scuba gear, but the dive shop supplied mesh bags, so we used theirs.

Instead of a day pack, I took a small triathlon backpack that I got in a race.  It was GREAT! It was big enough to carry our dive logs, dive computers and reading glasses when we went for lunch. If I needed a “purse” at supper, I found I took this one as Murray’s glasses and a few odds and ends fit inside it.

We tried the Sea to Summit laundry soap leaves to do a bit of laundry.  The clothes were not all that dirty so it wasn’t a really good test of the product.  I felt I had to use about 3 leaves in a small sink full of water to wash Murray’s golf shirt.

The Tea Tree Oil Shampoo bar worked very well. Good lather and hair felt clean. My hair was a bit rough feeling with no conditioner, but I can put up with it for a short period. I think this bar will go to Bhutan and India with us.

We will have to test more solid forms of bug repellent as our one test of citronella patches was a miserable failure.  I am still wearing the spots inflicted that night.

Posted in Bonaire, Planning and Packing | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Bhutan Update

Posted on July 19, 2011 by murray

Just as we were to walk out the door on our way to Bonaire we received an email from Druk Air informing us that the flight to Bhutan has been cancelled. Not even delayed, it has been completely removed from the schedule. Normally a cancelled flight would be OK but since it is the flight that gets us into Bhutan and we can only enter Bhutan on a specific day due to their tourist requirements, the email created a bit of angst. Panic might be more to the point.

Two hours later we had found that we could get from Bagdogra to the Kolkata airport and could catch another flight and still be in Paro, Bhutan on the date required. Instead of letting things sit for 10 days, while we were away, we contacted Druk and booked the alternate flights. After some reflection Debbie and I thought we may be able to overland it to the Bhutan border. We arrived back home, did some research and we think that the overland route is a better option.

No one can travel in Bhutan without a travel guide so we had to contact the tour company to arrange to be picked up at the border and we had to get hold of Druk Air to get a refund on the air tickets. We have done so over the phone and by email and neither of our proposed changes seem to be problematic. That said, neither party has contacted us to confirm the new plans.

This new route should provide us with some interesting scenery that we would not see from the air and my past experience with long distance cab rides in SE Asia is that you can stop when you want and take in the surroundings. In a way, the cancelling of the flight, rather than being a pain, will turn out to be a opportunity to get more out of our trip.

Our habit on past trips has been to book accommodation for the day we arrive after a long plane trip. On this trip we are going to pause 1/2 way to our destination and try to get some rest rather than jet for 24+ hrs. Last night, we researched hotels around the airport in Frankfurt. We booked a room on line in the Ibis Frankfurt Airport Hotel for one night on the trip to Bhutan and one night on the return trip. One of the reasons we picked this hotel is that it has a free shuttle to/from the airport. Hope it all pans out. Over the next short while we will spend time puzzling a few pieces of the trip together.

Posted in Bhutan and India, Planning and Packing | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Packing List Additions

Posted on July 16, 2011 by debbie

After every trip I add items to the packing lists that I have written on our list as we packed.  It is usually stuff I forgot to add in the first place, or stuff we realize we might need.  Today I have added the following items to the packing lists:

Scuba Diving

  • Eraser (to remove writing on underwater board attached to compass)

First Aid

  • Sleeping Pills (thought I might use these on the flight – didn’t)
  • Basic First Aid Notes

Toiletries

  • Cotton Balls
Posted in Planning and Packing | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Camera Housing Update

Posted on July 15, 2011 by debbie

We have put our investigators’ hats on to figure out what caused the leak in the camera housing. We had determined that the leak was either caused by user error (me) or by an actual leak in the housing.

The seal got very sandy when I got tossed into the water by a wave on an exit of a dive, so one idea is that I had not got all the sand off the seal when I cleaned it and that caused a leak. When we got home, I cleaned the seal, re-greased it and cleaned the opposite side of where the seal sits. I then closed the housing and placed it in a sink full of water.  After a couple of hours, the housing was still dry inside.

When I got tossed into the water, I had hit the housing on the rocks as I fell.  I did not think it impacted that hard. My son suggested we do a pressure test on the housing to check for leaks caused by cracks.  We are lucky that we have a recreation complex that has a 15 foot deep dive tank for platform diving.   I took the housing with me to the pool and sunk it in the dive tank and left it for about 5 minutes.  When I reeled it up, there was water in the nose of the housing.  It was leaking.

Mur and I took the nose of the housing apart and, using a magnifying glass, searched for cracks.  We found what looks like some cracks, but we cannot tell if they actually go right through the plastic. If these are not cracks, maybe the screws, rubber seal etc got jarred when I fell and loosened up. We dried everything off and put it back together.  We discussed taking it to the dive tank to test it again, but we are wondering if we will be able to trust the housing again.

We can buy used Canon PowerShot cameras online for about $60.  So, if we spend the $60, get a new camera, go on holidays and have the housing leak, we are out $60 plus dive pictures.

Or we can just buy a new camera/housing.  We looked at SeaLife’s underwater cameras yesterday, as our strobe flash is a SeaLife.  They have a couple of really nice cameras. mmmm….I like this idea.  I think I am leaning towards this option.

So, the camera and the housing look like they have reached the end of their lives.

 

Posted in Bonaire | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Post-mortem Bonaire

Posted on July 13, 2011 by murray

Debbie and I debrief our trips to see if there is anything we can use in the future especially if we return to the area. Here are some of the things we came up with after our return.

The Carib Inn. It was an outstanding place to stay. It is a DIVER’S hotel. It is small, it is on the shore, has a small pool, and an on site dive shop. There is not much to do there except dive. The people there cater to divers. The dive masters expect you to be competent and do not coddle you. They do not expect you follow them like sheep and if you can extend your dive to 1hr. 15 you will not be hassled when you return to the boat.  If you are a novice diver the folks will help out, if you ask, but you may feel more comfortable dealing with a more ‘full’ service operator. If you do not dive at all you may enjoy your holiday more at a resort that offers more creature comforts. Personally, I greatly appreciated the respect Debbie and I were given and would return in a minute.

Food. The island does not have much in the way of agriculture. Therefore, all of the food must be imported. So, be prepared to pay slightly more for your meals. Not much, but a couple of bucks more per person per meal. Debbie and I figure our budgets quite tight and our meal spending was under our budget but we made breakfast in our room each morning and missed a couple of meals. Anyway just be aware.

Restaurants. We went to several. The best overall restaurant was Richard’s. The food was good, the prices were OK and the service was excellent. Next on the list would be the Sunset. The food was OK, the prices OK and the service we got was very good. The Sorobon, across the island from Kralendijk, also had good food, OK prices and good service. The one I would avoid would be Bambu, the owner was not particularly nice to us and in fact turned our business away because we were a group of 9 without a reservation. There was only 10 or 12 people in her establishment at the time. We did not have a reservation at any time during the week and  always managed to find a spot to eat.

Weather. The temperature in Bonaire was a constant 90 F. It should have been hot for us but there was always a breeze and it was a very liveable 90. It is this breeze that makes the windsurfing on the east side of the island so good. We arrived home to rain and 15 C. I am so cold I have to wear long sweats, a hoodie with the hood up and socks in my indoor Birkenstocks. Last night I had to find a touque to wear to bed. We’ll soon be acclimatized and 15 C will seem normal, too bad. (A touque (twok) is a wool hat to all but Canadians, but touque is the proper name and the rest of you folks should catch up with us.)

Tourist sites. For my part the flamingos are overrated. We saw a few, some standing in the water, some flying in formation. They are interesting but only as a sideline to the diving. The donkeys and goats held little interest whatsoever. The salt ponds were OK but again not worth the trip if that is your only interest. The slave accommodation at the south of the island was interesting strictly because of the size of the structures and the fact that those little dwellings were home to the folks that did a lot of work on the island.

Vehicle rental. Voyager Event Rentals did us very well. We rented trucks for the 8 days we were on Bonaire. We were met at the airport at 5am by a shuttle and dropped off at our hotel where our trucks were waiting for us. The shuttle driver had the keys and gave them to Debbie. We found the Voyager office the next day and did all the paper work. John the owner was extremely kind and helpful. We had to depart early as well so we left the trucks in the parking lot at the airport and they were picked up after we left. If you are going to shore dive you will need a truck and I would recommend Voyager to anyone traveling to Bonaire.

Re-entry into reality. We had a strange time at both the American and Canadian customs. The border guards had a personality.

We arrived at George Bush International, Houston and were completely taken back when we discovered an ‘express’ line for those of us with connecting flights.  It is now possible to bypass the long line of people that are making a stop in Houston and stay behind the security wall. This saved us a tremendous amount of time. There were very few people that used that service. The customs agent was the most personable border guard I have ever met. I always assumed that they hired boring people with zero personalities for that job, but not only did this fellow talk he actually made a funny joke. We had a nice conversation albeit short and it gave us a good feeling about visiting the country.

Then to top off the day when we arrived at the Edmonton airport, the border guard that dealt with us was also a happy guy, the conversation we had was again short but was very pleasant. He wanted to know where Bonaire was and was pleased to have us give him a geography lesson. He made us feel like maybe it was good to be home.

Temperature aside it is good to be home. It will not be long until we are off again so a bit of the normal is needed.

Posted in Bonaire | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Homeward Bound

Posted on July 11, 2011 by debbie

We wrote the last two blog posts on the flight from Bonaire to Houston, with plans to post them in the Houston airport.  Both the Edmonton and Calgary airports have free WIFI zones, so we made the crazy assumption that other airports will have free WIFI.  Wrong! Couldn’t post in Houston, so now I am at home, sitting in front of my desktop computer.  Here are our thoughts from yesterday.

We are on our way home. Our last day in Bonaire was a busy one. The newbie divers, Mur and I did a boat dive. Went out to Klien Bonaire, to a site called Bonaventure. It was a calm and relaxing dive. Once we got back, the newbies headed out with A to see the flamingos, shop and do some last minute errands.  Mur and I went for a last shore dive to The Invisibles, on the south part of the island.

Met some really nice folks out there.  As we were getting ready to dive, a young man from California was kind enough to explain exactly where to find a frog fish.  Unfortunately, not knowing what a frog fish looked like, we could not find him, although we were probably staring right at him. Our impromptu guide returned to shore just after us and he had found the frog fish so it was still at the designated spot, we just could not see him.

As we were exiting, an older man from Indiana walked out into the surf and offered me his arm.  We then walked into shore together.  He said he always helps his wife out this way. What a gentleman!

We have chatted with a number of folks staying at the Carib Inn and they are all very nice, willing to chat, share dive stories and tell snippets of their lives.

Dive folks are generally super nice people.  I am not sure I have ever met a nasty diver. It sure makes for a nice holiday when the people we meet are all so friendly.

It has been great traveling with our friends.  Murray and I were a little apprehensive about traveling with people we know as we have done the bulk of our traveling by ourselves. It has been a lot of fun listening to J, B, S and R describe their adventures in their open water cert class, hearing all the “pool news” from A and marveling at J and A’s feats of wind surfing and kite boarding. Murray and I both agree that we would travel with this crew anytime.

The nine of us enjoyed a Bonairian farewell supper last night at Richard’s.  We were able to reserve the table out on the dock at the restaurant. Richard even allowed us to bring our own wine. We had a delicious meal and shared stories from the past week – most awesome underwater sight, best thing to do above water, best restaurant and such. It was a wonderful way to say farewell to a great island.

My turn. My turn. If you are looking for a beach holiday or a resort that caters to your every whim and if this part of the world if calling you, go to Aruba. You’ll not find this type of holiday on Bonaire. If you’re one that goes to a place to see the sights, again Bonaire may not be an ideal choice as there are a few sights of significance, but only a day or two’s worth. Bonaire is a great place, if you dive, or from what I can make out, if you windsurf.

The wind surfing (I do not windsurf so I can only go on my impressions of what is said) is good. I think if you are an ‘expert’ you can do well anywhere there is a good wind. On Bonaire the Lac Bay is a shallow, contained bay that is on the windward side of the island and is ideal for beginners and intermediate types to hone their skills in a non-threatening environment.

The diving is easy and very laid back. The sea life is abundant. You are not forced into any schedule but your own, if you choose to do a boat dive then you have to be there when the boats leaves but, if you shore dive, you can leave when you want, dive for as long as the air allows and come back when you want.

Debbie had a word with the fish last night and it seems that they will be awaiting our return so it looks like that choice has been made. It is only a matter of when.

Posted in Bonaire | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment