Robben Island lies 9,67km from Cape Town, across the icy, shark-ridden waters of the Atlantic. Windswept and waterless, the 518ha Island has long been a place of banishment and despair: Infamous as an apartheid-era, Maximum Security Prison from the 1960’s to the 1990’s, its most famous prisoner was Nelson Mandela. Today, the island is a national monument and World Heritage site, celebrating the triumph of the human spirit over the shackles of the past.