Okay, so it's been a couple of days - sorry!! Saturday was a stay in bed & take it easy day. Got absolutely no sleep on Friday night - too much sun & this sodding ear infection & I was ready to get back on the plane & jack it all in!! Thankfully, was feeling better by the end of the day & Mr P texted and so we had a chat and the propsect of lounging by his pool & doing nothing but the odd spot of babysitting or visiting the occasional vineyard for 2 weeks became incredibly appealing. So I decided to stop feeling sorry for myself, take some more medicine & get on with things.

Sunday was feeling much better, so went to the Company Gardens and was planning to go to the Slave Lodge, but that was shut unfortunately. So walked around the Company Gardens, which to be honest I was a bit disappointed with. Way too many men sleeping rough - though I don't blame them, it's a bit nicer there than some of their other choices - and I was looking forward to the Rose Garden, but it all looked a bit dry and run down. So I walked up to the Museum and Planetarium which was pretty cool. The Planetarium show was good & the Museum was huge and had some great exhibits, though it's a bit strange to navigate through, as there is no one clear path, like alot of museums, kept having to double back on yourself so as not to miss anything!!! Anyway, finished off with a couple of hours in the shade by the pool - which was sodding freezing!!! Colder than pools at home!! I'm all for a cool pool to refresh in, but this was icy!! Will think twice swimming in it, just dip in to cool off.

Had fog come in last night, kept hearing the fog horn go off intermittently, so I thought today would be a good day to go to Robben Island, as the cloud cover would lessen my chance of burning. (Being very careful about this, as am generally surrounded by lobsters at breakfast - these people are crazy!!) Was very lucky to get a ticket for the last tour of the day on the 3pm catarmaran, so decided to kill the next 4 hours by wandering around the V&A waterfront, as I hadn't really done it any justice. OK, so there are shops & stuff, but I'm not here to shop. Having said that, I went in the Craft centre looking for a painting to send back to Mum & Dad and ended up buying 2! One was the usual landscape piece of art I always buy on my travels (will have such a great collection by the time I get home!) but the other was a complete impulse buy. It's a picture of warriors dancing, slightly impressionist I guess and totally not the kind of thing I would normally buy, but I was completely entranced by it, so I got it!!

Had some lunch, thank god I have my appetite back, and got the 3pm catarmaran. 2ish hours is not really enough time on Robben Island, there is so much to see and hear that you could easily spend the best part of a day there and still not do it justice. The tours are given by ex prisoners, so they are incredibly real and personal and the prison is just a small, but very important, part of the islands' history. The stories of the complete & utter cruelty and degredation are really quite frightening - it's very sad to think that so many people can be so incredibly cruel and think so little of other human beings. I admit I can hold a grudge and there are one or two people in my past life who I wouldn't spit on if they were on fire, but some of the things that happened here - way beyond my understanding or comprehension.

Stood in one of the communal dorms which was about twice the length of my parents' conservatory and the guide said that they used to keep up to 100 prisoners in the room. That they didn't get actual beds until the 1970's and that the wardens used to mix the criminals & the political prisoners, so the criminals would beat up & abuse the politicals. When we went in the single cells that they used, I measured it out the way I used to measure bedrooms for my house (stick arms straight out either side, then stand on one foot, raise the other and lean forward so horizontal to the floor - I know it sounds silly but that's about the size of a double bed length & width) and the cell was not much bigger than that. I can't imagine having to spend pretty much your entire life in a space not much bigger than a bed that most of us sleep in. To come out of that kind of regime and be tolerant to your captors illustrates a strength of personality & level of forgiveness that I think few people would be able to achieve and my admiration for Nelson Mandela has only increased.

Unfortunately I didn't get too many pictures, as I was mostly trying to listen to the guide & then my camera has started playing up, which is not good.

Anyway, have seen to 2 things I most wanted to see in Cape Town, so anything else in the next couple of days before I go to Kruger is a bonus. Might go to the "Castle" tomorrow - honestly, compared to some of the castles I got dragged around in my childhood, this one if definitely more of a fort, but they call it a castle, so when in Rome....