This island was once an exile for lepers but it is infamous in recent history for Nelson Mandela’s 18yr imprisonment, among many other political prisoners. For 12yrs they were forced to work at the limestone quarry, pointless menial labor, as a form of punishment. All those years not only blinded their vision from the painful reflection but caused respiratory problems like pneumonia, asthma, and cancer. Mandela can no longer take flash photos nor shed tears as a result. There was a small cave dug into the exposed rock that the prisoners used as a toilet and shade from the sun. In secret they would write on the walls with their fingers to educate the less schooled. This area was the only place the inmates had to socialize as they were kept in separate cells in seclusion for most of the day. It was within these limestone walls that the ideas for an apartheid free South Africa were crafted; the country’s first democratic parliament.

In the prison we met our guide, a prisoner from 1977-1982 accused of being a student activist. He was 16 when he was arrested and told the wretched story of his capture at night in his home while his shocked family pleaded with the police. He shared in gruesome detail life behind within those walls including the beatings, brutality, and torture he endured and witnessed during his detention and life on Robben Island. No one can hear his story and not be moved by his tragedy and eventual acceptance. His scars are a tragic souvenir from his life there. We saw the cell that Nelson Mandela spent his 18 years on the island, smaller than the pens the guard dogs each lived in. It is astounding that apartheid was alive and strong up to 1994 and shadows of it still linger all over Africa. For proof one only needs to look at the shanty townships hidden in the outskirts of each city.

We tried to resist the tempation of the Capetown tourist trap of diving with great white sharks, but how could we say no to danger, fear, questionable animal tourism practices or freezing ocean waters?

Capetown is perhaps the most reliable location in the world for seeing great white sharks. There’s a large cape fur seal colony 40,000 strong sitting in shallow water just off the coast and the unique combination of their presence and the underwater topography creates an irresistible chum line known as Shark Alley. It is estimated that about 1,000 white sharks a year pass through the area, each staying for just a few days.

But all that really matters is that we decided to brave 54F waters, claustrophobia and fear of animals that eat people to jump into a little cage and get closer to some sharkies.

The cage is a little small and you have to stick your toes and fingers outside to hang on. After a while you realize that the water is really murky partly thanks to the chum you’re swimming in.

The boat chums the water and throws big fishheads in to give the sharks something to focus on, but tries not to let the sharks eat any of the bait so they don’t learn to associate the boats with feeding. So for a while we just watched the sharks swim up to the bait and then turn away as it was pulled from them.

But these guys are pretty quick and a couple were a bit fiesty and did manage to get teeth into the bait – and that made for some good times as the skipper and the shark fought over the bait.

We had two exciting close encounters while in the cage. The first one was a smaller shark that caught the bait and held on. He was right next to us thrashing around for a minute or so before he finally ran off with the fishhead:

The next fun one was a real excited shark lunging at the bait right next to us and gave the cage a hard enough whack with his tail to knock us down. The video is great – it shows nothing but the camera bouncing around in a sea of bubbles and foam.

At the end of the day, we saw around 6 different sharks ranging from little 8′ juveniles to a couple 12′ers and one 13′ male (all sizes according to our skipper). Swimming around us, they looked pretty big, but these were all still small compared to the 18 feet they can grow to.

And we still have all our fingers and toes.

Yes, yes, we don’t condone this. Don’t do this at home. Kiddies look away. Leave it to the professionals…and all that. Now read on.

Our first stop in South Africa was Stellenbosch, their answer to wine country. Armed in a rental car we weaved through the scenic hills covered with rolling vineyards, grand estates, and looming rock mastifs. Imagine Napa valley with the Rocky mountains as the backdrop. Really a gorgeous drive on a sunny day. The wines were largely uninteresting and for my uber sensitive taste buds hardly drinkable. With descriptions like ‘asparagus’ and ‘mint’ we didn’t get our hopes up. But essence of ‘Karoo bush shrub’, reminiscence of ‘a cigar box’ and a taste of ‘lead pencil’ was over our threshold and we did all we could to not gag too noticeably. We did find some lovely stuff, specifically a Spice Route flagship syrah and a Simonsig white wine infused with lychee. We stopped at a brandy distillery and tasted one of their 15yr old bottles. I think they tried to poison us with Drano. Seriously, people actual like this stuff?!?

Yes, that would be Steve in a right hand drive car on the left side of the road with a sloshing glass of white wine in his hand (Gewurztraminer in case you’re curious). Talk about bad things coming in 3s. Oh wait, making a u-turn onto the curb on the wrong side of the road in front of a police car with said drink in hand would make 4.

*editors note to mom and dad, kids and law enforcement types: notice that we are in the parking lot of a winery. This is a staged and posed photo. The keys probably aren’t even in the ignition.

It’s been a crazy last few weeks as you can see from the posts below. It seems like we rushed through Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia. We’re now just a day away from Capetown and the end of our African adventure. We’ll get a week to relax in Capetown on our own and then we’re off to the Seychelles for a couple week vacation before moving on to Asia.
There’s way too many photos from all the animal encounters and death defying feats. Hopefully I’ll get some time and a good net connection in Capetown to post them.

Swakopmund has more to offer than just skydiving. They’ve found that crazy tourists like us will do just about anything if it’s on sand. In one action packed day, we went sandboarding, jumped out of the plane and then jumped on quad bikes for a wild ride on the dunes. And then sat down for one of the massive German-style meals that abound here in Swakop.

Sandboarding is just like snowboarding. In fact, they use snowboards with a layer of formica on bottom that you need to wax on every run. It’s not as fast as snow, but hurts a lot less when you fall. The only real downside is that you have to hike back up the dune for each run. No lifts here! Mary had a great time with a few nice runs. I wasn’t making any fancy turns with my ankle all banged up, but I still had a good time. Then they send you down some seriously steep bowls on flat boards clocking up to 50mph. Good times.

Off to the skydive and then straight to QuadbikingRiding the quad bikes was a blast. We ended up in a group of just 3 of us with a guide who took us up and over dunes, through “rainbow” runs where you go as high up the side of a dune as you can without tipping over – and then turn back down the same side. It’s fast, fun and pretty scary. Don’t worry mom and dad, we had plenty of reasons to take it pretty easy. We were tired after a long day, my ankle was pretty sore and there was an accident the previous day that kept our speeds down.
One of our truck mates was driving a little too aggressively and landed his bike too hard. He fractured a vertabrae and his pelvis. He’ll live, but his vacation is over. He should be able to fly home to the UK in a couple weeks.Mary: I went to visit our bed ridden friend at the hospital. At the nurses’ counter there was a box on the wall labelled “Specimens/Monsters”. That was enough to keep me away. This happened to be the same hospital that Brad & Angelina had their baby last year. The nurses were kind enough to show some people the room they stayed in, etc. Yippee.

We landed in Swakopmund, Namibia for a few days of crazy outdoor sports. Swakopmund is really a study in opposites. One side of town is desert wasteland (except for the uranium mine), the other is the Atlantic Ocean. Aside from the crazy tourists running through town, it seems to be mainly a South African retirement community.

We decided very quickly that we’d learn to skydive by taking a one day course on “how to pull the chute”. The course culminates in a solo jump at 3500 feet (4500 for Mary) on what’s called a static line. That means that there’s a rope from the plane to your ripcord so your chute is automatically deployed for you after you jump. After a few dives of demonstrating good body position jumping out of the plane and dealing with panic, they let you pull the cord yourself. We didn’t have enough time for that, though.

After hours of chanting “arch thousand…look thousand…handles thousand…right thousand…left thousand…arch thousand” to make sure we could deploy our safety chute in an emergency, we were ready to go. We stuffed ourselves into a tiny plane with a big hole in the side and cruised up to altitude. Just to keep it interesting, our jumpmaster decided to skip all the protocol we had learned and just yelled “GO!” to me as I was crouched in the doorframe. And out I went.

All was going well until I looked up after my 5 seconds to find that there wasn’t much of a parachute above me. I had one of the common problems known as “twisted lines” which meant that I was falling really fast without a deployed chute … but that’s ok! With a few yanks and twists of the lines over my head, the chute opened fully and I started floating peacefully… and my heart started again. Then I opened my eyes

Below me was an incredible view from the Atlantic out through the sand dune fields and off into the desert. After taking it all in, it was time to try out the flight controls and play with the chute. You get a cord on your left and right hands that let you turn the chute or flare to slow down briefly. It’s so much fun I almost couldn’t stand it. After a few minutes of gliding down, it came time to land. It’s only been two days since I sprained my ankle, so I landed one legged. Well, and on my butt.

Mary had a similar problem with her chute, but jumped from 1000 feet higher than me so had a lot more time to play around on her way down. She came in with a picture perfect landing.

We camped a night at Spitzkopf, Namibia’s 2000 foot Matterhorn of craggy rocks and rough boulders seemingly put in the middle of the desert just for us to climb. Being lazy, we picked a small 500′ish rock to play with. Our first bit of excitement was a 4′ monitor that ran hiding into a nearby bush and he turned out to be the friendliest creature we met.As we ascended the rock looking for fun paths, I started climbing up a narrow canyon with a bizarre tree that I wanted to check out up close. I got under the tree and within a split second of hearing really loud buzzing all around me, started feeling sharp stabs on my back.