Thursday, May 7, 2009

South Africa - Robben Island

Tomorrow morning I'm going to write my geography exam (just 3 exams left!), so I think it's a good reason to make a short trip to a country, which is far away and is very interesting for many reasons, including it's geography, but also history, cultural and linguistic variety... Yes, it's South Africa :) Of coruse, I'm not able to go there now and in the foreseable future, but having a postcard I can use my imagination to travel :) I think that compared to the other African countries, South Africa isn't so "hard to get" when it comes to the postcards, but I still don't have many cards from there and I was extremely happy to receive 2 South African UNESCO cards in an envelope this week :)
This one shows the Robben Island, which now looks very beautiful, but it used to be a prison island, where many political prisoners spent many hard years during the era of apartheid.


Robben Island
(Afrikaans Robbeneiland) or Penguin Island is an island in Table Bay, some seven kilometres off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa. The name is Dutch for "seal island". Robben Island is roughly oval in shape, 3.3 km long north-south, and 1.9 km wide, with an area of 5.07 km² . It is flat and only a few metres above sea level, as a result of an ancient erosion event. The island is composed of Precambrian metamorphic rocks belonging to the Malmesbury Group. It is of particular note as it was here that former South African President and Nobel Laureate Nelson Mandela and incumbent South African President Kgalema Motlanthe, alongside many other political prisoners, spent decades imprisoned during the apartheid era.

3 comments:

anne said...

Це справді гарно. Отак дивишся і не віриш, що така краса взагалі існує:)))
Успіху тобі на екзаменах! Мої починаються з наступного тижня:) Не думала, що таке кли-небудь скажу, але... Я вже не можу дочекатися:))) !

Оксана said...

Я теж рада, що екзамени вже почалися, тому що я на декілька тижнів до них хвилювалася сильніше, ніж зараз :) До того ж, я хочу, щоб вони скоріше закінчились, тому що тоді почнуться канікули :)))

anne said...

А я просто не хочу на роботу:р