Beautiful Cape Town, Or, The Perfect Day

I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Okay, maybe Matt Damon got a better tour of Robben Island in the movie Invictus, where he stood alone in Nelson Mandela’s cell and conjured the mental image of Mandela studying, chipping rocks in the courtyard, and reading the words to the namesake poem. The reality is that you get about 10 seconds to block and tackle the 99 other people in your tour group so you can snap a picture, but that is perfectly okay. We were so grateful that we were even able to get a ticket to go out to Robben Island, and we had the most perfect, gorgeous, lovely day! What a thrill to walk in the tracks of the most special and extraordinary Mandela, who went from spending 27 years as a political prisoner to become president of his nation.

First some background: We docked in Cape Town at 8 a.m. today, coming into the harbor as we watched a lovely sunrise cast rays of light on the nooks and crannies of Table Mountain. The mountain was so much bigger and more imposing than I expected, and to arrive in Cape Town harbor by ship is one of the joyous benefits of ship travel. We docked right at the heart of the beautiful Victoria & Alfred Waterfront, a huge shopping and restaurant complex, and as soon as we could leave the ship we headed straight for the Nelson Mandela Gateway to try to purchase tickets to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela spent 20 of his 27 years in prison. We had meant to purchase tickets online before we arrived, but online sales were closed by the time we tried, so we decided to just give it a go.

When we got to the ticket window, our salesperson told us the first available tickets were for the day after we were scheduled to leave Cape Town. I don’t know why, but I just couldn’t walk away; I really felt that I was going to be going to Robben Island. First I asked if they had a waiting list. No. Did they sell tickets if people with presale tickets didn’t show up? No. Did they wait to see if the boat was full and then sell tickets at the last minute? A pause. Let me check. And before you know it, we had two tickets on the 11 a.m. ferry, the Sikhululekile.

The 7-mile trip out to the island, which we had just passed on our ship a few hours before, took about 40 minutes and was a nice change of pace from our big ship--fast and breezy. We docked at the island and walked to tour buses that take you around the island to see the lighthouse, churches, homes for the guards, and the leper cemetery (Robben Island hosted a leper colony from the mid-1800s until the 1930s). We also saw the building where Robert Sobukwe, leader of the Pan African Congress, was held in isolation during the 1960s. His four children were allowed to visit him and their pictures were on the wall above the beds they used.

Then we left the bus and met a new tour guide, a man who was actually a former prisoner on the island. Our guide Sparks spent 7 years on Robben Island after he was convicted as a terrorist for his anti-apartheid political efforts.

Sparks took us to the large room where he lived with 60 other men in double bunks. There were window openings with bars, but no glass, so during the winter the rain and wind blew in; there was no heat, and the 60 men shared 2 toilets and 2 showers. Then Sparks took us to see Mandela’s cell, which was in a section of individual prison cells, each a rectangle about 6 feet by 8 feet. Mandela slept on a mat on the floor and had a bucket for a toilet. Very sparse, very grim. And yet he decided to befriend his jailers. Sparks said that many of the prisoners hold reunions now and the jailers also attend.