Day 7 Oahu

Today was the day we got to swim with the sharks. It was amazing! Unfortunalty we missed our boat on account of an acident that closed down the H1 Highway. I never would have imaged there were so many traffic problems in Hawaii but I guess I didn't consider the fact that it's a heavily populated island. We eventually made it with time to kill before the next boat so we decided to grab a bite to eat. I ate a spam masubi on the way up and we also stopped to try a oh, so famous shaved ice at Matsumoto's Shaved Ice on the North Shore. I'd seen this place multiple times on the Food Network. It's extra special here because they serve the shaved ice with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and sweet red azuki beans. Yum! Well....I wasn't thinking "yum" after we got on the boat. We road the boat 4 miles out into the ocean and the other two couples nominated us to go first. Aaron and I got in the cage, they pushed it off from the boat and started to throw chum into the water. Immediately the sharks started to circle around the cage we were in! We used up 2 underwater cameras within minutes. Soon they pulled the cage back to the boat and the second we got on deck I knew technicolor rice and spam were going to be seen in my immediate future. I spent the rest of the boat ride leaning over the side. What possessed me to eat that stuff before getting on a boat? I guess I didn't realize how rough water really was. I didn't feel so bad after I found out that one of the couples had come all the way from London, England to swim with the sharks and at the last minute the wife chickened out. And she was the one who's dream it was to do it! Oh well. I was fine once we got on land and I don't regret a minute of it. We went to the beach at the North Shore to recover and recoup for a while. On our way back to Honolulu I made Aaron stop at the Dole Plantation. We were tired and beat but it really was worth the stop. We saw ity, bity, baby pineapples growing! Did you know that it takes a plant 22 months to produce it's first fruit? 15 months later it produces it's second fruit and then it's done! No more fruit. Sad but true. Once we got back to the city we made one last stop at an extremely cool Japanese Dollar Store. I wish I'd have brought an empty suitcase just to bring stuff back from that store.