August 19

We were told that the boat to Robbin Island was booked for several days, however I wanted to take a chance and went to the pier. At 9 am I went to the ticket office and we bought tickets! The boat took off at 10 am. It wasn't the catamaran, we went onto to the prison boat. It was quite chilly 58 degrees. It took almost an hour. Buses meet us and we had a terrific tour leader. The island has 200 folks living on it. I was surprised about the size of the island
There are over 1,000 graves. Some of the previous prisoners and wardens live in peace on the island and there's no crime. There are two churches. Only one is in use...what was fun to learn is that they only do weddings on Valentines day. This past year they performed 13 weddings and the one thing you can say is "these were life sentences'. We had a former prisoner walk us through the prison building where Nelson Mandela was. His room had a cot, a very, very small table with cup and a bucket for a toilet. The room was the size of a bathroom. There's much more information I'll share with you later. Next we took a drive around the peninsula and stopped at a place where there were 100's of African penguins. What fun to watch them. Paul and I are finally on the restful part of our journey. We are definitely not in the third or second world anymore. Tomorrow we will celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary. What a joy to be married to this wonderful man. Blessings and Joy be yours, we'll see what tomorrow brings.
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