There's nothing like it! The feeling of waking up and feeling excited about what today has in store for you. I was going to visit Robben Island. The prison island where Nelson Mandela had been imprisoned for so many years of his life.

As soon as I got up, I got ready to go out. All smiles I arrive at my car, only to find that it had been broken into somewhere during the night. At first when I opened my car door, I could see that someone had been ruffling through my things and couldn't find anything of value. But it suddenly hit me, I had left some things in the trunk of my car, because they were simply too many to take out every time that I had arrived at a place to stay. It was a big travel suitcase with all of my winter clothing which I did not use yet, but had with me, since it might get cold in Cape Town. My empty (or so I thought) laptop bag and a camera bag with 2 SLR cameras and lenses, that were given to me as gifts. I know, I know, "what an idiot", you're probably thinking. Who leaves their stuff in the car in South Africa? I ask myself this same question.

This of course was a shock to me, as this is the first time that something like this had happened to me directly, in the 28 years that I've been living in this country. At first I was okay with all that had been stolen. After all, all were material things and can be replaced. Then I discovered (about 2 weeks later) that my hard-drive, with a lot of memories on it, was in one of the bags as well. Before you ask, "where's your back-up", this one was my backup hard-drive, but it contained a lot of originals as I had changed computers and moved around and just dumped stuff on it. This left me so depressed for about 2 days.

After the police had come to take a statement and look at the car, I could finally set out to my planned adventure of the day. With no time to spare, I had arrived at the V&A Waterfront to get on the ferry that was taking us to Robben Island.

Robben Island was a surreal experience. It's a very dry and desolate little island, that had many purposes over the years. There are still some people living and working on the island. We drove around the island in buses with a tour guide, who explained the history and what had happened on the island. We saw the house of Robert Subukwe and the cell of Nelson Mandela.

I think the most surreal thing for me, was the letter that Robert Subukwe wrote to his wife so many years ago. You could see the passionate love for his wife and reading, and how he took inspiration and comfort from those books.

These are the images that I had captured with my Galaxy Note 4, that tell the story of Robben Island as we left Cape Town and arrived at the prison and the tour we did through the island and cells. 

This is part of my Cape Town Adventures series and I'll be posting much more about Cape Town throughout the weeks to come. Be sure to subscribe on mailing list, like my Facebook page or follow me on bloglovin if you'd like to know where I've been and what happened while I stayed in Cape Town for almost one month.

Until next time!