Robben Island....

I came to spend some time with you today. I wanted to come sooner, but you know how it is - I always postpone the important things, as if the delay would somehow mark its significance.

Your Island is tranquil, like the sacred silence which follows after a great old tree buckles. You are not here any more. I close my eyes and for a moment and I can picture you in the courtyard by Block B, just for a fleeting moment, smiling wryly at our ignorance. Cell no. 5 feels staged and the hallway only holds the echos of tourist chatter. 

Out of the night that covers me,

    Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

    For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

    I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

    My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

    Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

    Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

    How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

    I am the captain of my soul.

Invictus by Ernest Henley

Then, just before Cape Town harbor, a spray throwing a rainbow of salted water high into the air! A tail slowly emerging from the water, freezing for a moment in mid-air before disappearing beneath the surface. I tried to tell the Americans next to me - look, look, did you see that!? 

But just like that, you were gone.

Hamba kahle Tata...