I'm Back From South Africa

I had an amazing trip which will take more than one blog posting.I'll do it in chronological order Robben's island, penguins, baboons, and then lions.

For our first part of the trip we stayed in Cape Town and got to tour around a little bit. Our first stop (well...after shopping) was to Robben's Island. And no, we didnt just go b/c we saw it in Invictus. The tour was very interesting. First you get on a bus where one of the former political prisoners gave you a tour of the whole island and a little about the pre apartheid time on the island with the leper colony etc. The island was beautiful, it was so hard to imagine it being used for such terrible purposes. The bus we took had written down the side "the journey is never long when freedom is the destination"

Then we got dropped off at the jail where another former prisoner showed us the terrible living conditions and dining hall etc. The last stop was to Nelson Mandela's cell that he lived in for 18 years. It was miserable! Even the dog kennels we saw earlier on the tour were bigger. Its just amazing to me that he could be released from prison and still have such a positive outlook, and to teach people never to forget, but to forgive.