May 7, 2012 - Cape Town

May 7, 2012 - Cape Town

We left the ship around 8:30am to go to Robben Island. The ship's tour hostess told us how to get to the ferry by walking, so we followed her directions and found the ferry terminal in about 10 mintues. We had purchased the tickets on the internet and joined the line to board the ferry, The ride was about 30 mintues. Robben Island has been used as a prison for many years, but is most famous for the political prisoners held there during the apartide period (1948-1994). We took a 45 mintue bus ride around the Island and then had a guided tour through the prison, where we saw the cell where Nelson Mandela was held. Our guide was a former prisoner. We walked back to the ferry for the ride back to Cape Town harbor. There is much other history to the island including it's use earlier as a lepper colony and as a fortified gun location during WW2, to guard against invasion.

We stopped to buy more wine and then returned to the ship using the shuttle.

After lunch we cleared immagrations and returned to find our cabin completely flood. A pipe must have broken and I don't know what is going to happen. Right now they are vacuuming up as much water as they can. At about 5:30pm I sent an email to the Princess home office. We decided to eat in the buffet seeing that we really can't clean up. We had drinks in Don and Myrna's cabin and then had dinner. After dinner we checked on the cabin and found that the room was almost put back together. Except the rug is still very wet, most everything else is ok. The email to Princess brought a whole host of Offices to our cabin and things seem to going in the right direction. Hopefully this will be our worst night.


Sent from my iPad

Hal