Robben Island - Cape Town, African Adventure

How's it going Steemers??

After our canoe trip down the Gariep river, our last night camping was spent at Highlanders wine farm. Here we drank all the wine and partied way into the night. To read all about out check out @terrybogan post about it all right here
https://steemit.com/travelfeed/@terrybogan/highlanders-wine-farm-cederberg-mountains-south-africa

The next day a very seedy group boarded the truck feeling pretty sorry for ourselves. It's a long quiet drive to Cape Town. When we arrive it is raining, which is good as the rain is much needed for the city.

Our last goodbye photo with the truck

For our last night of the tour we are staying at a hostel. After unloading the truck and saying goodbye to our awesome crew,

Keanen our amazing chef/drinking buddy and all round legend!

TK our truck driver and awesome story teller with all the knowledge of where the best ribs in Africa are 😊

Mishek our extremely knowledgeable crew leader / travel guide

We have an hour to chill before going on a "township" tour. Now everyone else thought this was a tour of the town, I however knew it wasn't. Instead we were going to tour the make shift shanty towns that millions call home. I felt super awkward about this. Once explaining this to Renee and the other people they weren't really keen on it either. But since we were already on the bus on our way there, we were committed.

Now the Langa Township is a first hand look at how corrupt the South African government actually is.. The local police will hardly ever enter these townships and we were told that there is a murder every two days and a rape every three days inside these townships through out Africa. And out here they have their own laws and when found guilty of murder or rape the person is taken out the back of the township and burnt alive.

After we entered a house of a family in the township to see how they live out here in their tiny tin shacks, which I thought was very intrusive of their life. But at least they must get some money from the tour company for allowing us to see the way they live.

We had a brief chat with the family and learnt the strong bond of community in these townships, and how they all have to make something from nothing with basicly no help from the government.

Next stop was the township centre where the massacre of 1985 took place. Here police open fired and killed 6 local teens. Then at one of the teens funerals a couple of days later, the police ordered the crowd to disperse immediately, when the crowd did not comply the police opened fire on the crowds killing 35 people and leaving 27 wounded.

After that we headed for lunch at a restaurant in the township. We turned a corner and passed two men in bullet proof vests full of shotgun ammo, carrying shot guns. All of a sudden five men run out onto the road waving their hands and yelling. I thought to myself this is it, we are getting car jacked out here!.. Luckily for us these guys work at the restaurant and were out on the street to wave us into our secure carpark for the restaurant.

We enter the restaurant and there were two other ladies on a different township tour. They were not so lucky, as they explained how they were just robbed at knife point for their bags and camera gear.

None the less we pulled up some chairs and ordered some food. We got to go into the kitchen to see how they were cooking up the BBQ, man it smelled delicious!

I gave a cigarette to one of the guys hanging out at the front door and asked where could I get some beers from. He explained how to get to the bottle shop but advised that it definitely would not be safe for me to walk there. So he insisted on going for me, what a legend. I gave him a nice tip and shouted him some beer.

The BBQ was delicious

We ate our lunch then as we were getting back into the van our tour guide said that we had to cut the tour short as there was a protest against the government going down and the riot was in full effect, and that it was not safe for us to go anywhere near it. We were all totally cool with this decision so we headed back to our hostel.

The following day we all organised a trip to Robben Island. Now Robben Island is the place where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated for 18 of his 27 years during the apartheid. It is also was the prison for all of Africa's political prisoners and criminals.

We caught the first ferry accross
"the sea was angry that day my friend, like an old man returning soup" George Castanza.
The water was so rough people where getting sea sick left right and centre.

One and a half hours later we finally step foot on Robbins Island.

A strange feeling was in the air as it was super quiet. Alot of death and suffering has gone down on this island over the years.

We all loaded up on a bus as they gave us a tour of the island.

This island was a leper colony back in 1984, there is still a leper graveyard on the island.

We drive past the small town where the prison guards lived and past the local church.

Then stopped for a quick lunch break along the shore line looking back at Cape Town.

Then we we're off to our last stop, a tour around the prison where Nelson Mandela and many more political prisons spent their sentence.

We met our tour guide Peter who he himself served 18 years in this very prison, which he was convicted for two counts of manslaughter, terrorism acts and political conspiracy during the apartheid.

He gave us a tour of this prison where he lived for 18 years and we started at the football field.

He told us about how the guards would never allow the prisoners to be in groups and talk but at the football field it was the only exception. Here they could discuss politics and when the guards asked them what they where talking about they would say they are discussing the football match which was about to start.

From there we checked out the kitchens, and the prison cells.

The prison cells where jam packed and very basic amenities. They only had a thin mat on the concrete floor for a bed. The guards installed microphones in the alarm speakers so they could listen in on the inmates discuss politics which was not allowed and was met with harsh punishment.

It took awhile before the inmates worked out there were microphones in the speakers. When they did, they would cover the speakers with a pillow and someone would keep a watch out for guards while they discussed politics.

From these cells we moved onto the inmates recreation area near where Nelson Mandela stayed.

Nelson Mandela jail cell window

Over in the far corner is where he wrote his book " Long walk to freedom."

We then walked through the cells and had a look at Mandela's jail cell.

Mandela's cell

Then we returned back to dock to catch the ferry back to Cape Town.
Back in Cape Town we were greeted with some seals chilling at the dock.

This tour was a real eye opener to how fucked humans can be and how bullshit politics and racism actually is. We are all people of this earth, we all bleed the same colour, and we all eventually turn into the same dust. After spending weeks travelling through the most beautiful landscapes and seeing the most amazing wildlife Africa has to offer, it was a harsh reality check of what humans are capable off ☹️

Stay tuned for my last African Adventure Blog where we summit to the top of Table Mountain!
I promise this will be a more uplifting post but just like life you have to have the good with the bad.

Happy travels
G

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