June 16th

June 16th in South Africa is a national holiday called "Youth Day." So Mitch didn't have to work and we decided to go to Robben Island which holds the prison that Nelson Mandela was sent to in the 60's. He stayed in the maximum security prison as did all the political prisoners, yet the people who actually killed others were in the more minimum security facilities on the island. We took a ferry to the island which took about 35-40 minutes or so and the water was pretty choppy so I wanted to blow chunks but I
did not. It just was not pleasant. Then we took a bus around part of the island where the tour guide pointed out different buildings and the limestone quarry where the political prisoners all did hard labor. They actually only needed to be at the quarry's for 6 months as the limestone was used around the island, but even after they had built all that was needed the prisoners were forced to keep working out there even though the dust from the line stone would settle into their lungs and make them

sick, and the light from the sun reflecting off of the stone was affecting their eye sight. We saw the room in which Nelson Mandela stayed in- the tour guide inside the prison was a previous prisoner himself and he informed us of the cruelty that went on behind those bars such as being forced to eat his own feces. The prisoners did not have beds and they were only given three blankets. It does actually get cold in South Africa and the guards purposely only gave all the black prisoners shorts and short sleeve shirts to

wear while all of the white and colored prisoners received long pants and long sleeve shirts to wear. I watched the movie Mandela on the plane from London to Cape Town so it gave me a sense of what happened in this country and what Nelson Mandela went through.

After the tour of the island we had lunch back in Cape Town and then decided to visit the aquarium. I don't have much to say about that; an aquarium is an aquarium and they aren't much different where you go.