I climbed out of bed this morning at 7 a.m. to make our appointments with North Shore Shark Adventure. I love that my husband desires to live an exhilarating lifestyle; yet, I suppose it is a stark contrast to my desire having been to swim with dolphins...
The earliest we could call for reservations was 6 a.m. but we were both exhausted. It was nearly impossible to get either of us out from under our haven of white hotel sheets. The boat was scheduled to leave port at 11 a.m. so we needed to be there by at least 10:30. JD checked his email while I traveled to the lobby for our morning Starbucks run. For some reason, we didn’t have our act together so we left the hotel around 9:20 (it takes an hour to get to the North Shore). We had to stop at Wal-Mart so we could buy an underwater cover for the Flip Cam though. After asking the electronics lady at the weirdest placed Wal-Mart I’ve been to (it was located downtown), she said that she didn’t even think the Flip had an underwater cover (which they do because I saw it on the Wal-Mart website yesterday). Oh well. We drove through the pineapple fields to get to the North Shore, welcomed by exotic trees and breathtaking views of the mountains and ocean. I was so thankful JD finally got to see what I had the opportunity to witness last Sunday!
We arrived to the port around 10:45 a.m.
In other words, we barely made it on time.
This was perfect, as our timing prevented me from thinking about the "What If" scenarios prior to jumping into the ocean. The instructors quickly briefed us on Shark Safety
(can you believe there is such a topic?)
as the boat started into the vast blue. Views behind and beside us were extraordinary. I know I use words like that to describe Hawaii fairly often, but that’s the only way I can express the beauty!
The captain drove out about 3 – 4 miles offshore. The first group, made up of about 7 people, was the first to go down in the cage tied up to the side of the boat. [I got sick during this time, due to the nature of the 4-foot waves tossing the small boat around.] We could see the sharks from the boat but they looked much smaller from above than from down below. The cage was beating steadily against the side of the boat. The top of the cage was surrounded by about one foot of steel bars, held above the water by buoys. The sides of the cage had glass panels and steel bars to hold onto. This is basically what we looked like: