Hi Everybody,

It's that time again. I'm on my way back to Mawson, Antarctica to start another summer season working on the Adelie Penguin Monitoring program at Bechervaise Island. The 2002/03 summer will be a long one, almost 6 months from when I departed on the 26th of September 2002 to about March 15 2003 when I return to Hobart. The voyage to Mawson on the I/B Kaptain Khlebnikov starts in CapeTown, South Africa. The reasons for this is the cost of chartering the ship. It is much cheaper to fly the 150 expeditioners to the ship than have it sail empty to Hobart. So at 6am on Thursday 26th Sept we left Hobart airport bound for Sydney, Johannesburg and then finally CapeTown.

Traveling on a 747 for 14 hours was a novelty for me because the last time I did it was when I was 3 years old! The amount of space inside for 340 passengers and the takeoff weight of the aircraft (about 400 tonnes) is very amazing. The in-flight entertainment helped while the time away with 6 movies and 5 other channels to watch. The bit I liked the most was the continually updating map showed the location of the aircraft. Since the earth is round, the shortest distance between two points is not the same as you would think on a flat map. We flew the great circle route down the coast of Australia, over Tasmania and then in a sweeping circle over the Southern Ocean. At one point we were over the pack ice near Davis and Mawson, but at an altitude of 10,000m!.
We arrived in Johannesburg at 4.30pm local and then proceeded to board a flight to CapeTown at 6.45pm. I didn't see much of Johannesburg because of a dense layer of dust/haze over the airport. We arrived in CapeTown at 9.30pm and were taken to the hotel with all our luggage. I had no difficulty getting to sleep after nearly 25 hours of traveling!

We stayed in CapeTown for 3 nights with 2 nights in a hotel in the centre of the city and 1 on the ship. On the first 2 days low cloud and fog covered Table Mountain ruling out a trip up the cable car, so decided to take a ferry trip Robben Island and visit the Prison where Nelson Mandella and other political prisoners of the Apartheid Regime were held.

Robben Island is a museum 12km off the coast from CapeTown After a short ferry ride we joined a crowded tour around the island which was split into two parts - a bus ride to see the village buildings and a walk through tour of the prison. I found the second part the most interesting because the guide was an ex-political prisoner who spent 9 years there.

The prison has been left almost as it was since 1991 and as we walked around he told us in very graphic detail all the torture, abuse and intimidation which was inflicted upon him and the other prisoners. One particular part was that if a family member applied to visit a prisoner on the island, the application took 6 months to "process" and in this time the applicant was usually interviewed, tortured, detained or even killed by the secret police. The prisoner would then be told that their visitor could not come without explanation. The balance to the horror was the way in which the prisoners kept focus on educating themselves and obtaining their freedom.

Visiting Robben Island was the highlight of CapeTown - from the perspective that it allowed me to more appreciate the evil of the Apartheid Regime which I have read and heard about but never really been able to place into perspective.

CapeTown bears a number of similarities to Hobart. One is Table Mountain rising up behind the city, and the other is the proximity of the shipping wharves to the city. After I got back from Robben Island, I walked around the newly redeveloped 'Waterfront' wharf where there was a large collection of shops, restaurants and craft stalls of all varieties.

The currency in South Africa is the Rand, with 5 Rand to one AU$. Prices for food, services (taxi's) and local craft was very cheap, with a nice meal at a restaurant about $20. However prices for other imported goods was on par with those in Australia, with prices for recent release CD's about AU$27.

CapeTown is hardly the "real" Africa, but is was still interesting to feel the vibe of the city as we walked around. There were some beggars, plenty of street stalls, different types of cars & signs in English and Afrikaans.

I walked into the railway station at 5pm on Friday and stood watching the people in a hurry, read some of the local newspapers and browsed the numerous street sellers stalls. While time didn't permit I really would have liked to venture out to a township and seen more of the way most people lived. In the back of my mind was all the warnings about the crime and not to walk around by yourself, but I felt pretty secure (while trying not to look like a tourist!).

The compromise with such capabilities is that the hull is very round and so the KK rolls very heavily - even in light seas. For all of the 10 days we were at sea the KK rolled back and forth quite often up to 40 degrees. At one stage we rolled 32 degrees with only 0.5m swell!. For two nights we had 10-12m swell making sleeping very difficult as I had to hang on to avoid being thrown out of bed. Needless to say the arrival in the sea ice was very welcome!.

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