Cape Town Lovin'

Hey Everyone! -  I tried to post this last night, but of course, the Internet wasn’t working…

Today we have been going non-stop!  We were up at 8:00AM for breakfast, headed to the field for practice at 9:30AM, were back at the hotel for less than an hour for lunch before heading out for a full afternoon of touring.  It is now about 9:15PM and we are left with two “free” hours tonight for homework before curfew at 11:00PM.

The highlight of the day, and the trip thus far, has been visiting Robben Island.  For those of you who haven’t heard of it, Robben Island is the Alcatraz of South Africa; the only difference is that Alcatraz was for dangerous criminals while Robben Island was for political leaders and activists up until 1991.  Robben Island is most famously known for being the prison where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned (along with other political leaders from South Africa for many years up until 1991).  Our team took a thirty-minute ferry over to the island and went on two different tours.  The first tour was of the prison itself, led by an inmate from the 1970’s.  Our tour guide, Jama, was a prisoner for five years in his early twenties and served alongside over a thousand political activists.  It was so cool having someone who had actually experienced life in the prison giving us the tour, someone who could tell us first hand what it was truly like.  We walked through the different sectors, saw the cell that Nelson Mandela had occupied for so many years, and learned what the daily life of a prisoner was like. 

The second part of the tour was a bus tour of the entire island.  We saw penguins, turtles, cemeteries and the quarters where the prisoners forced into isolation were kept.  From the outskirts of the island we could see the coast of Cape Town in the distance and it was absolutely beautiful.

After taking the ferry back to the mainland, the team headed towards a local mall to eat dinner.  On our way to the mall, we saw a pair of men dressed in bright orange suits.  One of my teammates joked about the men’s attire, claiming that it looked like the men had just broken out of jail and cut the sleeves off of their uniforms.  They were street performers.  Not just any street performers, they were amazing street performers.  I videoed their entire performance, so I’ll try uploading it to this page soon.  To give you a quick overview, without spoiling the video, they were the ultimate gymnasts and daredevils – limbo-ing under fire sticks, balancing on upside down chairs stacked on top of one another twenty feet in the air, squiggling their entire bodies through restricted spaces, and so much more.  I have never enjoyed a street performance more in my life.  They were funny, original and incredibly talented…I couldn’t help but leave them a tip in their moneybox at the end of the show :)!

 It is just about curfew and tomorrow is a big day.  We have our second and last exhibition game tomorrow against Australia at 7:30PM.  They will be our first real test and I can’t wait to see how this team reacts.

Goodnight everyone!! & GO CANADA

Victoria