Cape Town

It's a little strange to be celebrating Christmas in the southern hemisphere.  It just feels different for someone from Minnesota.  Still, the signs are even more omnipresent than back home this time of year.

Cape Town is gorgeous.  It reminds me a lot of San Francisco with a better view and taller mountains.  Lots of great food, wine, beer, shopping and fast internet.  We've even gone to 3 movies already.  However, all of Southern Africa that can travel feels like they have come here at the same time.

Outside the V+A Waterfront are statues of the 4 South Africans who have won the Nobel Prize.  Here I am with Desmond Tutu.

Lots of lazy afternoons in the harbor on this trip.

Table Mountain is the first stop for many as it was for us.

The other tourist stop is Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned. He was moved off the island, but this was his crucible. It was a tour that was a little lacking; I wanted more about the prison experience at Robben Island, and it missed on this educational front.  It more of a bus tour on an island than anything else.  Still it was worth it to have been at this famous place.

Similar to Alcatraz, you can see the city from the prison.  This might be the best view of Cape Town anywhere.

We were led on a tour by a former prisoner at Robben Island.

Here is Nelson Mandela's cell. It is left as it was when he used it.

After liberation, the former political prisoners returned and all of them brought a rock to make this lager pile.  This is where they prisoners worked all the days breaking rocks as their labor.

Mandela hid the manuscript for "Long Walk to Freedom" in this garden.