April 5 Robben Island

Ryan: Early in the morning, we were awoken by our rental car engine slowly rolling into the driveway. Dad quickly got up and walked to the door and headed towards the car. It wasn’t our desired rental car (because it was the non-wagon Tata – not enough trunk space to fit four suitcases and maybe a back pack or two. Soon the woman in charge of the rental car realized his mistake and left for the short car ride to replace the car at the dealership. Soon later, they were back with the proper car and we piled in, all ready for our five week ‘Garden Route’ tour through South Africa.

We arrived at the waterfront at 7:15 a.m. and made our way to the boat that would soon be taking us all the way to Robben Island. We had already printed off the tickets for the boat except when we signed them in right before entering the boat, it turned out we had two of the same tickets. Mom soon solved the problem by going to the front desk. Finally she came back with four different tickets. We quickly hopped on the boat and soon road to Robben Island, Brendan and I reading By Royal Command and Bloodfever (Young Bond). We arrived on the island an hour after we had left the waterfront. We were accompanied by a tour bus and a guide who toured us around the first half of the island. He taught us about the differet sections of the jails, different houses, and little mosque type building erected when an important man died. We learned that the jail guards had tennis courts, a golf course and many other activity complexes. We saw penguins and other unique wild life on the first half of the tour.

The second part of the tour was led by a guide who had served in the prison for around seven years. His name was Sparks, he was very kind and led a great and memorable tour. Many things we learned from Sparks were that instead of their birth names they were named a number. Sparks was named 5663 because he was the 56th prisoner of the jail and he arrived in 1963. Nelson Mandela was named 46664 because he was the 466th prisoner of the jail and he arrived in 1964. In many of his eighteen years at the prison Mandela wrote an autobiography called ‘THE LONG WALK TO FREEDOM’. He had hid it behind a grape vine. And just in case he was found out, he organized for someone to smuggle it out of the prison. In the end millions of people all over the world were able to read it. The last prisoners were released from Robben Island May 24th, 1991.

Joe: Driving on the left included, getting into the city in time for our 8:00 Robben Island ferry, leaving the city afterwards and using near-treacherous Mountain Passes that were like driving through the grand canyon! Winding roads perched on the edge of the mountain. One-foot high stone fences between you and 1000m cliffs. Driving on the left side of the road (the cliff side) with oncoming traffic. I seemed to have learned to drive under the pressure! Oh yes, the Tata wagon was a standard transmission!