11th October 2009 Up early and got a taxi to Victoria Harbour where our tour of Robben Island begins. Our ferry departed at 9am from Nelson Mandela Gateway, at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town. The tour included a return trip across Table Bay, a visit to the Maximum Security Prison, and a bus tour of the Island. Since the end of the 17th century, Robben Island has been used for the isolation of mainly political prisoners. Nobel Laureate and former President of South Africa Nelson Mandela was imprisoned on Robben Island for 18 of the 27 years he served behind bars before the fall of apartheid (from 1964 to 1982). Kgalema Motlanthe, who also served as President of South Africa, also spent 10 years on Robben Island as a political prisoner, as did current President Jacob Zume. The island was also used as a leper colony and an animal quarantine station. The island environment is a natural haven to a wide variety of wildlife and a manmade reminder of South Africa's history. Our tour guide on the bus was a university student who was studying Robben Island. Inside the maximum security prison our guide was an ex-political prisoner who gave us a first hand account of life in the prison. We had a tour of the prison museum including the former prison cell of Nelson Mandala. The island gives testimony to Nelson Mandela's great legacy and serves as a reminder of South Africa's shaded past and bright future. The Anglican Church built in 1841 is the only public owned building on the island.
Our tour to Robben Island was 3.5 hours long, including the two half-hour ferry rides. We then headed for "The Company's Garden" situated in Queen Victoria Street. It takes its name from the Dutch East India Company who first started the garden in 1652 for the victualing of their ships that plied the spice trade route between Europe and the East Indies, via The Cape of Good Hope.

The Company's Garden is abutted by numerous important landmarks, including the lodge house for the slaves who built large parts of the historic city, the present day Houses of Parliament, the Iziko South African Museum and Planetarium, St George's Cathedral (which is the seat of the Anglican church in South Africa), the National Library of South Africa, the South African National Gallery, the Great Synagogue and Holocaust Centre as well as Tuynhuys, which is used by the President on state occasions. The garden had the oldest cultivated pear tree in South Africa, estimated to have been planted in 1652. Historic statues and a sundial dated 1781 in the centre of the garden. A well dating from 1842 with a hand-pump embedded in an oak tree next to it, which is still connected to the well by an underground pipe. It is a symbol of the significance of water from Table Mountain and the origin of the garden. A memorial slave-bell which is actually the old fire-alarm bell from the original town hall in Greenmarket Square. The bell itself dates back to 1855. A rose garden designed and built in 1929. Delville Wood Memorial Garden, designed in 1929 by Sir Herbert Baker, commemorates the World War 1 battle at Delville Wood in France, in which a predominantly South African force of more than 3 000 soldiers was reduced to 755 survivors by German forces. A Japanese theme garden with a stone Japanese lantern donated by the Japanese Ambassador in 1932. A koi fishpond. It was a beautiful way to end the day. We freshened up and headed back to Victoria Wharf for tea.