A nod to Mandela - the back way to Robben Island

Can you get more iconic than that? Living the dream

 I noticed a couple of security cars parked alongside the mall entrance with their lights on as I pulled in. The car park sitting pregnant in the dark waiting for the daily onslaught of shoppers. I tried to choose one of the empty spots that would be safe for my car from arseholes with shopping trolleys and opportunists in the early morning darkness. Eenie meenie, miney … The security guards weren't interested in a polite hello, so i fumbled in the blackness for my sports bag and left my Mazda to her fate. Like a child at kindergarten. My bag and me stood by the rendezvous next to McDonalds. Blinking like an animal caught in the headlights at each car that passed. Some black guys came sauntering past, i hid my phone subconsciously and greeted them. Their response felt surprised. I'm not sure whether it was because i greeted them at all or whether it was because i was a white woman greeting black men. It felt strange and i was nostalgic for the joie de vivre of a Zambian black person who would never dream of passing anyone in that situation without a soul warming good morning. Ah well, maybe I'd changed these guys day in some small way.

A familiar squeaking of metal announced that my wait was over. Sure enough, beyond the halo of blinding light coming towards me, I could make out the boats stacked up on the trailer.  Our tail lights weren't working so we were in convoy, the other car suckered to our backside. It was a long time since I'd done that familiar journey out to Bloubergstrand. Another lifetime. By the time we pulled into Klein Bay the sun was well up, the tide out and blobs of people already parading to the island across the sand spit that i knew was there behind the water. Cool wetness beneath our feet. The bay sweeping round to the familiar house where my husband's family had lived. The sloping red roof. A car outside it. Strange memories. Happy ones and torn ones of turmoil from another time. 

We winched the boats down, a sea going quad, a double and a single. Rolling the dollies out onto the wet sand. The water was like standing in an ice bucket. My feet sending shards of nerves straight up into my head. Id forgotten the cold. Intense and invigorating, the crystalline water lapping at the edges. There wasn't a breath of wind as we pulled out through the mounds of kelp that stood up out of the water. Table mountain already in view on our stroke side as we curled around the little bay.  The island where I'd had the breath shocked out of me jumping feet first into a secret pool hidden amongst the rocks, deep ice cold. Flocks of stand up paddlers were already wobbling around in the shallows, dogs barking up and down the beach. Their voices echoing in the silence. The blobs gradually shrank, the dogs became fainter and at last it was just us and the vastness. 

The gentle gurgle of the water running out through the hatches, the slide of our seats against the runners. Blades plopping in. We passed an enormous ship that was sitting so high out of the water it looked like it was on a sandbank. The propellor almost visible as it towered up above us even from far away. Robben Island sat floating on the sea in front of us. Id looked out from the house over the years. Seen the ferry racing enthusiastic Mandela worshipper tourists from the harbour. Contemplated those prisoners incarcerated, my mind imagining. We approached with stealth - the designation unseen, behind our backs, beyond our eyes. 

Its a whale!

"There's a whale!" The cry went up. We'd stopped for a drink or to readjust a seat or something. A black mass rose up through the glass, ripples curling and sucking into whirlpools as it slipped back down again. We waited. Sitting in the silence of the ocean. Puuuuuu. Up it came again. Moving fast. Its face encrusted with a wart-like acne of barnacles. Serpentine. Its body gliding through the water, its tail fluke a perfect crescent that rose up pointing skywards before disappearing. We pulled the quad around to follow it. A great lumbering turn alongside this speed queen. Its gone… our hearts sinking..... No. There! Its there! It turned. Facing us briefly. My heart paused, vulnerable. I felt intrusive and excited and a little out of sorts. It looked. A fraction of a second look. White water foaming around it before it disappeared and left us.

Mandela's view of Table Mountain

On the glycerine water it didn't take us long to sidle up alongside Robben island. Our minds had drifted, mesmerised by the lady on our right who had seduced sailors since long before time. Reclining above the ocean as we sauntered into her iconic skyline. Suddenly it was there - i turned and looked over my other shoulder. a long, low line dotted with trees and houses. Not at all what I had in my mind. The cox slowed the boat down to drift through a morass of kelp. There was the mouth to a man-made harbour on bow side hiding behind a mound of groynes thrown up in a jumble of concrete. I felt instinctively nervous. As though we were on an illicit mission and would be accosted at gunpoint at any moment. The boat drifted into a little sandy bay alongside the harbour. Sand sharks in their dozens bursting away in great billowing clouds of brown as we waded through the shallows. This was it. The maximum security prison! Mandela's home for 18 years. I let the power of that sit with me a while as one of the other rowers headed off to inspect a very officious looking sign. 

The great arrival!

Biltong and nuts had appeared out of people's dry bags which we were devouring. Rather more interesting than my early morning grab at the bananas. "Its blank!" He reported back, my nerves calming. "Completely erased." The white sign in my vivid imagination had had it casting its officious hand threateningly at anyone who dared set foot on the island rendered harmless in the post Apartheid sunshine.

Robben Island - low lines of trees and buildings

The return trip was glorious. Retracing the route that a Khoisan strandloper with the strangely Japanese sounding name, Autshumato, had paddled. Defiantly escaping the clutches of Jan van Riebeeck back in 1660. He sounded like an enterprising man, living on the island from 1632 as postman and liaison for passing ships before developing trade in cattle between his Khoi and the Dutch back on the mainland. But his business dealings backfired, the alcohol that was part of the payment perhaps fuelling the situation. Feeling cheated he stole from the Dutch and was imprisoned by van Riebeeck for one and a half years before making his escape in a rowing boat back to the mainland.

Sliding over the icy water, suddenly we were surrounded by the explosive breaths of more whales.  One, two! Theres another one! And another! Look. You can see the blow holes - plumes of condensation bursting high above them into the air like steam train funnels. The sound reaching us a fraction of a second later.  A pair was behind us closer to the island tail fluking together and the original youngster we'd seen at first and another two closer to shore. Totally out of season - perhaps they had overwintered here. Unusually so for southern right whales.

Spot the circle to see the whale

With some leg entangled manoeuvring, I had swapped to cox midwater and was zig-zagging my way not very effectively towards Little Bay. Trying to head for the big block of flats that was the landmark where Rock Kestrels wheeled hunting swallows. I kept pushing the rudder the wrong way and having to correct. On the return leg i'd been in stroke and the crew had been annoying the hell out of me not following my timing, tugging at the boat out of turn as we juddered back to shore. Sitting in the coxswains seat was a brief respite although now I could see what was going on, the one guy not squaring.  At all! My replacement arm pulling. Oh boy. I zoned out and just sat there marvelling at the magnificence around us. The beauty of this wonderful earth and the vastness of the ocean we are blessed with. 

Forty minutes blinked by and i was guiding the boat ashore amongst the throng of seaside worshippers. I hopped onto my phone to report to the husband that i was back safely. Damn. The phone was nearly dead. There was a message waiting for me "Chased out the water by a Great White." And then the phone went blank…...

photos courtesy of the rowing crew.