Hoare Hut

I just spent a totally surreal weekend in the Hex River Valley. I joined my housemates and the University of Cape Town mountain and ski club (apparently there is snow for skiing in SA if you try hard enough to find it) on their annual social. Suitably it takes place on top of a mountain!

It was a beautiful sunny day, blue skies, calm breeze and probably the sound of birds humming contently after eating tasty sun-warmed grapes from the vineyards if I had listened hard enough. Just before the top of the mountain I glanced back at the vineyard banked valley in the summer scene below. Then climbed over the peak of the mountain into putrid rain and a vicious wind bringing with it volumes of mist and chilling me to the bone. In the space of an hour and half I had intentionally walked straight into a little bubble of a UK winter (Well, as bad as a remember them being, which is fairly horrific :-).

I had also run up the mountain with my pack on. An annual tradition of the club is a race for the mad or naive (or both). By the time I got to the top the race leader was out of sight and I had left the others a while ago. I found myself on top of the mountain floundering over rocks in thick mist, only able to see 20 meters ahead and desperately in search of UCT's hut marking the end of the race. I passed a non-UCT hut with the a placard reading, "in memory of ... who died here". It did nothing for my confidence.

Not too long later I got to the UCT cabin (unfortunately for the cabin its named Hoare Hut). I was welcomed by five students who had come up the night before and were contently brewing tea - human contact suddenly made everything seem less dramatic. I also had turned out to have won the race, the leader had unfortunately taken a wrong route at the top of the mountain. The other two racers came in ten minutes later, sweat steaming off their backs as they snuck into the warm hut.

The surrealality continued when everyone in the hut donned formal clothes (I had a nice black shirt and white tie thanks to my housemate Jan AND a ridiculous fur coat that was once a wear-wolf costume (not enough space to explain) and we ventured out to greet the other walkers with bubbly as they reached the top. 30 plus people stayed the night in the hut with the bad weather swirling around outside. In the morning we walked down back into sunshine.

The weekend was a good break before for the start of the week. I spent today hunting for the contact details for all the politicians linked to each area in which TAC has a branch. It’s a job of website scouring and being the recipient of broken promises as local government staff promise to - but don’t - fax contact details!