Day 2: Alcatraz

 27 May, 2022

Visiting the Alcatraz

I did not know that this trip in the absence of my friend, Csabi, would be about so much more the race than Alcatraz. So the boat barely left and I went out of the interior part of the boat to check the wind, the water - to feel it all.
Of course there was no wind, no waves, no sign of any current - I took a photo even to document it.

 

 

On the way to Alcatraz

 

I saw the waves and it was hard to imagine myself - or anyone else, in fact - swimming in it. It was rough. I was trying to visualize nevertheless, where we were going to start from and where we were going to swim to. Identify the direction of the current and how it was or was not going to help the swim. 

Arriving to the island, the hand move credit goes to Mariann, who said I should do something cool with them!

Before the tour began, I needed a photo.

 The tour

They kept talking about how difficult it was to escape from there and yet how many tried. Then Mariann looked at me and said
"Maximum security prison, why do they keep saying that when my little friend is going to swim out in an hour from here?" She was so cute the way she said that I decided to record it and shared it with some of my friends. Having others have faith in you is always empowering.

The prison cells...

 

A basic prison cell.

looked like this. From an outsider's point of view, it's really an all-inclusive service with a sink, toilet and bed in place. There were two darker options: solitary confinement and maximum solitary confinement?! Not sure what they were called exactly but these were even more secluded from others. The hardest one was where they even defined when and how much light you could get in your room. Tough. Shared the story of famous prisoners and their attempts to escape. In one of their stories, the guide asked

Why swim if...
you can take the boat? Then Mariann just looked at me raising her eyebrows and having her eyes wide open curiously waiting for an answer that could justify it but she just got me burst out laughing instead.

The radio
The prison cells had some kind of holes where prisoners could plug their earphones in to listen to the news from the outside world. I like the fact that there was an option and that they could hear something from the outside world but I would have much rather listened to music than the news. It was a little romantic that prisoners liked New Years' Eve and other similar social events because crowds would then gather and the water would carry through the noise from the shore: the music, women's laughter, children playing - making them feel like they were a bit part of a normal life. 

Mariann and I before departure