A day trip to Robben Island

There are undeniably fabulous villas to rent in Cape Town and you may have selected the finest Cape Town villa rental available but while you may find it difficult to tear yourself away from your Cape Town holiday villa, there are a few attractions that you shouldn’t miss.

For example, a trip to Robben Island, declared by UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee as a World Heritage sight in 1999 and of course the place where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated.

The tour begins at the Mandela Gateway at the V&A Waterfront, where visitors embark on a picturesque 30 minute ferry ride to the island. Once there, visitors are taken on a 3 and a half hour tour of the former maximum-security prison, where the former political prisoners were housed during their stay on the island.

The visitors are also taken on a 45minute bus ride around the island, where visitors are acquainted with the islands history.

The island was used in the past as a place of quarantine and was once a leper colony, a mental institution and a place of banishment for offending sailors, as well Muslim activists who fought the Dutch colonialists in the Far East and traditional leaders who opposed British occupation.

It was only in 1960 that the apartheid government used the newly constructed maximum security prison as a political prison. Here political leaders such as Nelson Mandela developed their concepts for a post-apartheid South Africa. These very concepts lead to the overthrow of the regime and one of the worlds most liberal democracies.

This was one of the reasons that contributed to UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee naming Robben island a “triumph of the human spirit” in 1999. So be sure to tear yourself away from your luxury villa in Cape Town, just for one day, for a trip to Robben Island and the insight into South Africa’s recent history that it will bring.

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