Capturing the Moment

    Beaches of the North Shore   An Oahu friend told me the other day that no other island can compare to Oahu's beaches. "In fact it is like one big beautiful beach", he said. So I decided to put that to the test. I drove up to the North shore starting at sunset beach down to the beach town of Haleiwa. That was farther than I needed to go to start thinking my friend might be on to something. The softest, whitest sand stretches for miles. Surfers leap off the sand into the ocean to ride the swell which happened to coincide with my north shore visit. Not a coincidence. And think...this is only a fraction of one side of the island. Give me enough time and I'll have the full picture of this island we call Oahu.

   This was something we had really been looking forward to, shark cage diving offshore of Oahu's North Shore. We booked with Hawaii Shark Encounters because their website seemed a bit more conservation and research based.     Heidi, Mark, Jason and I met the boat at Haleiwa harbor a little after 8am after camping out the night before. With 11 passengers we headed out about 3 miles offshore where they had already set up the cage that morning.    Heidi was the first one into the crystal clear water. We could see a large, dark shadow of a shark from above the water before even getting into the cage. We only needed snorkel gear, just like in South Africa, and then could hold onto the inner bars of the cage to stay below water. I tried to stay at the bottom of the cage to take pictures and avoid all the bubbles from the sharks thrashing at the surface. I also wanted to avoid being told to get out. If I'm under water I can't hear you...   We...