Okay, Sunday evening. I have been busy, so I'll try and keep this brief. Slept in until 9:30am this morning. There was an option of going 'shark-diving' this morning (that is, standing in a cage surrounded by 'up-to-six-metre' long Great White sharks. I could have done it. I love trying new things, I've got the time and the money, yet something about it doesn't sit right. I'ts not that I'm frightened. I guess it's more that I kinda feel it's taking the p1ss out of the sharks a little. It's one thing to observe them in their natural habitat. It's quite another (in my oh-so-humble opinion) to poke them with sticks and drag fake seals in the water to get them excited. I dunno, maybe that's unfair. I read months ago, though, that this sort of thing has increased the likelihood of shark attack in these waters, since the sharks are less wary than they used to be. Who knows?

Anyhoo, this morning I mostly spent sitting at the bar talking to Claire. Claire is from Newcastle, spent months travelling around, then decided to settle. She's just going to do some part-time work at the hostel. This afternoon, she was off to a casting (she's a model. Oh yes, she is.). She's worked in a lion-breeding programme, and as a midwife's assistant in a rural village. Claire used to be a Cisco network enginneer for Pricewaterhousecoopers. This place.

So, went and had a look at Robben Island with the Norwegian girls this afternoon. It's a ferry out, then a couple of hours of coach tours and a walking tour round the prison. Sadly, the mist rolled in, and you couldn't see much - let along the apparently-spectacular views of Table Mountain. Still, it was really interesting. All the guides and workers on the island are ex-political prisoners. One of our guides was arrested as a student during the seventies. The most interesting thing for me was the way they treated various prisoner categories. There's a photo of political prisoners breaking rocks while the actual convicts learned to make clothing. They also dressed and fed them differently - 'asiatics', 'coloureds' and 'bantu'. I didn't take too many photos, because (and this sounds a tad self-righteous, I suppose), I was trying to listen and learn. It was incredible, though. I'd say ninety percent of the people there had a camera or camera-phone, and frankly, I found it a little rude how many flashes were going off while the guide was talking about hunger striking, for instance. I guess this is really rather rich coming from me, but it's not all about the photos...)

The funniest thing was the guide on the bus, who'd developed a 'ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls' routine with a few, 'anyone here from Denmark?'s thrown in. Ironically, he had a number of mildly rascist jokes up his sleeve ('...because every time they get to a corner, they build a shop!'). Nobody seemed to notice but me, though.

Anyway, cab back to base, a free veggie stew in the bar, made by the owner, and I have a beer waiting for me (together with the bar's 'back in five - it's just for the love' note).