Robben Island

The clouds lifted (partially) and the winds died down....and we finally make it to Robben Island.

I took a picture of this postcard because it's hard to do Cape Town justice when describing it. And it's impossible to get a good picture, unless you're in a helicopter. Table Mountain and Lion's Head rise up right out of crystal clear blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean....and squeezed right between them are the 4.3 million people of Cape Town and several phenomenal (and phenomenally cheap) restaurants.

Robben Island is where South Africa kept their black, colored (mixed race, white and black), and asian male political prisoners for several decades. And where Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in prison.
In this cell:

That red bucket that you can barely see between Abby's shoulder and cheek was his toilet bucket. Each prisoner was given three small blankets; one to lay on top of (on the concrete floor), one to fold into a pillow, and one to cover them. No cot. No glass on the window.
Prisoners who were less of a "risk" than those like Mr. Mandela, like this guy:

(our tour guide who spent 7 years at Robben Island after being arrested for recruiting people into the ANC) lived and slept together in this room:

There were 63 men in here. And no glass on those windows - the rain and wind just flowed right in.
They shared these three showers and these four sinks (and two toilets). And there was water flowing from these faucets only three days/week.

Racism was so pervasive in South Africa that black men at Robben Island were given less food each day than colored and Asian men (for example: no bread for lunch, just a cloudy white liquid).

Visiting Robben Island, seeing Mandela's cell (where the Obamas stood just a few years ago) and listening to our guide tell his stories of life in prison on Robben Island was one of the more sobering experiences of my life.
As Chris said to the kids when we were walking back to the boat, one of the most surreal aspects of seeing the former prison on Robben Island is thinking about what a waste it was putting a prison on this incredibly beautiful piece of land.