A Long And Busy Day

We had a kayak trip organised for 8am this morning. Though we were told yesterday that it was no longer running and were offered 6:30am or 11:30am. As we had something on in the afternoon we had to leave our apartment at 5:30am for a 6am meet up.

I'd never been in a sea kayak before, they are larger, heavier and have a rudder, operated by your feet. So paddling and using your feet to steer in conjunction with each other is a bit like patting your head and rubbing you stomach in a circular motion at the same time!

The sea swell was a bit of a challenge and our shoulders were feeling the strain, we were soon thinking we should have booked an hour instead of two. However, there were regular pauses to look at the dolphins and sunfish.

After 2 hours of kayaking we jogged back to the apartment, and I then did a bit more to bump it up to 4 miles. My shorts, soaked from the kayaking were almost dry by the time I finished.

In the afternoon we took our rescheduled trip to Robben Island. It was 50 mins on the boat, so needless to say no-one ever escaped during the apartheid era. The first part of the tour was a bus around the island explaining it's history. The second was within the prison itself and led by a former inmate. It was a very interesting insight into how he came to be there, prison life, how they spent their time, his release and his disappointment that 30+ years on, the freedom they had fought for hasn't delivered the expected benefits for ordinary people.

On our return we went for a few drinks with Christian, a Norwegian guy I cycled with during last year's charity Tour de France ride I did. He arrived here today for work, it really is a small world. We met in the Irish pub we'd been in on New Year's Eve, watched Luke 'the nuke' Littler win the darts and somehow it was gone 1:30 am before I got to bed. Looking forward to catching up on my sleep on the boat.Read more