Today was our Robben Island experience, and I was rather looking forward to seeing a bit of South Africa history. I've heard only good experiences from others who've done the tour, and figured being down in Cape Town made sense to tick that off my list. I honestly didn't know much history about the island, other than being famous for it's long list of political prisoners there, the most famous being Nelson. The island, which is 7km west of the coast, is Dutch for 'seal island'. It's roughly oval in shape, about 3km long and 2km wide and only a few metres above sea level, and was 'home' to a long list of political prisoners who were imprisoned there for many years or decades.

We caught the ferry over to the island and the tour last about 4 hours. The first half was in the bus and were driven around, the second half was taken through the high security prison and visited Nelson Mandela's cell. We also got to see the lime quarry that the prisoners spend years of their lives hacking away at it. The stories and history is endless, but was fascinating to hear about about the island's history as a penal colony, a leper colony and pantry for early settlers (and apparently penguins and their eggs are fairly nutritious).

The strength of the wind (rather gust or more like tornado) was just incredible today, can't remember being in such strong wind before, which unfortunately spoilt our view of Table Mountain, as can be seen in the first picture below. That has been pretty much my view of the mountain since Sunday, yet I still remain convinced it's behind there somewhere!

After the walk past Nelson's cell and a full run down of the history of the island and prison by a formal inmate, we were taken back to the bus, and then onto the ferry back to the waterfront, which was a rollercoaster of the ride as we were hitting both the waves and the wind full on. Made for a good trip back! Really glad I've managed to visit the island, it is something you only need to do and see once, but really interesting and does open your eyes to a bit of the dark past of the country. Then we met up with Will and Jen and made our way down to Hout Bay for some fish, chips and a cold fizzy beverage.