Robben Island.

Hirsh, Nick, Dave, and Juberg went on a road-trip up the Garden Route and the coast of South Africa over the next week. This left Cary, David, and me in Cape Town for the week. It was really restful, and we went out to dinner at a few nice places.

On the 17th, Cary and I decided to take the earliest boat to Robben Island. It is probably the biggest destination activity in Cape Town. We had wanted to go the week before, but had been rained out. The boat over is a catamaran, so if the waves are too rough, then the tours are simply cancelled. The world cup prices were equivalent to the summer prices, but over the past few weeks, everything has returned to their off-season norms. The tickets were 100 Rand each.

The catamaran held 300 people, but the large boat still pitched enough on the waves to create that roller-coaster feeling that left some people sick.

The Stadium. Cloudy days are so awesome for pictures.

Signal Hill and the Lion's head. In the foreground you can see ducks skimming the surface.

Moored at Robben Island

The view was spectacular, but it felt awkward posing there.

Part of the workground. Where the draft of 'Long Walk to Freedom' was hidden.

Unused World War II artillery.

Cape Town on the way home.

Robben Island is an incredible place. A UNESCO World Heritage sight. It has been used by the inhabitants of the Western Cape as a location for 'undesirables' for centuries.

I had just read More than Just a Game: Soccer Against Apartheid, so I was fairly familiar with the history of the island.

During colonial times, a Zulu leader named Makana was exiled here, and perished escaping back to the mainland.

Makana is the name chosen for the Football Association that the prisoners put together. The league gave purpose to many of the players and is an incredible story.

During the entire history of the apartheid political prison, not a single prisoner committed suicide. Guards did.

On Nelson Mandela's 89th birthday, soccer players and former members of the teams of Makana shot 89 goals into the old goalposts on Robben Island, and FIFA inducted the organization into its realm as an honorary member. It is the first independent organization ever inducted.

An exile of the political struggle gave us a bus tour of the island. A former inmate of the prison gave us a tour of the interior.

Visiting Robben Island is heavy, even if you are not connected to the history. I was very frustrated by the Zimbabwean group of young men horseplaying around, talking on their cell phones and taking pictures.

I refer the troubling tourism problem to an excellent post by my friend Daniel Saver about his trip to the killing fields.

Going to school in Memphis, where racial tension from '68 still boils, I am used to the dialogue. The National Civil Rights Museum gives me more of a sense of complicit guilt than Robben does, of course.

But the prison was BUILT in the mid-sixties. And the percentage of blacks in America is equal to the percentage of whites in South Africa.

Jim Crow was awful no doubt, but Apartheid was somewhere between Jim Crow and slavery. And this is ended in the early 1990s, while I was alive.

I hate race-conscious debate--as it inherently degrades the principles of individual accountability and choice by implying that you are accountable for what you have not chosen--but I can understand the negativity I have experienced from blacks and coloureds while I have been in Africa.

Robben Island was a good reminder of some of the less shiny parts of the experience, much like the township run, but I don't need to visit again.