Today was our last day at Cape Town, and the last day of our trip. We wanted to see Robben Island, the famous prison where Nelson Mandela was held captive for 20 years. It’s now a tourist destination and aims to remind the world of the oppression & tyranny that occurred just a decade ago. The unfortunate part is that we didn’t book tickets in advance, and the ferries were all sold out until the next Tuesday. Not to be defeated, we decided to wait in line for cancellation spots. We waited for the 10 AM ferry, didn’t get a spot.

We then had lunch on the Waterfront at a “market”, which was a giant warehouse-like building housing dozens of tiny vendor stalls selling all kinds of food. Most of it was non-vegetarian but we managed to get some good Mexican & Thai food along with delicious pastries and gourmet samosas.

After lunch we went back to wait in line for the 12 PM Ferry. Again, there were too many people ahead of us to get a cancellation spot. At this point we decided against waiting for the later ferries and drove to the famous Cape Town Castle. We wanted to visit a number of museums, but being a Sunday they were all closed. After discovering this, we ditched our plans to see the castle and decided to head back to the waterfront  to try for the next ferry.

Third time’s the charm, and we got the tickets for the 3 o’clock ferry. After a 30 minute ride we were on the island and were given a bus tour of the place before going into the prison. We were told of the history of the place, and got to experience something amazing. It turns out one of the inmates(a political prisoner who was at the prison for 5 years) was our guide. He talked about daily life and how the inmates would work with each other to teach each other how to read & write. It seems there were daily political discussions since most of the inmates were political activists, jailed for speaking out against the oppressive government.

After our guide’s speech, we went around & saw the prison cells before coming back on the ferry.

Again, another experience awaited us. The wind must have been 50 mph on the open air top deck of the ferry where Rushi & I decided to sit. The wind was so loud that standing up, we had to cover our ears after awhile to avoid hearing loss. Doesn’t this sound like the perfect setting to propose to someone? Well it turns out that’s exactly what happened. The ship captain came up, asked us all to sit in the rear rows so that we could witness a man propose to his girlfriend(Yes, she accepted). Throughout history, ship captains have had the authority to officially recognize marriages, and so these people were married on the way back from Robben Island. It was a pretty amazing sight, but we didn’t feel like taking pictures so you’ll have to use your imagination ; )

Back at the Waterfront we ate pizza at the same place we went to on our first night here, got our bags from the hotel and drove to the airport for the long long journey home. The flights were uneventful and went faster than expected, though immigration at O’Hare was a nightmare due to the staff’s total incompetency.

———

So ends our Afrikan adventure. It’s probably been a long read, but we hope you were able to experience our journey through the blog posts, pictures & videos. In 2015 we plan to climb Mt. Rainier in Washington and possibly Mt. Shasta in California as preparation for climbing Denali in 2016. Look forward to the trip reports and until then, continue to rock this epic adventure we call Life!  ; )

IMPORTANT! Click on any of the pictures below to go to the full photo/video album for Day 15. We highly recommend clicking on the “show info” button at the top right of the album page if you’d like to see our description of each picture. Also when videos play, be sure that the HD box on the bottom right is lit, or the video will look terrible!

(Note: If you are clicking through the pictures manually, be aware that there is a Flickr bug that causes a video to play if you’re looking at the picture preceding the video). We apologize for the inconvenience, but you can mute the audio if it gets annoying.