21 Mar 2009 – Rhodes Memorial

Despite the packing and Fall class scheduling that had to be done last night, about half of the house spent the evening watching Michael Clayton in the Common Room. The electricity had recently been restored to the room (it inexplicably shorts out sometimes), and we sprawled on the square of couches with our computers and papers to multitask as we watched.

At 6am this morning, Kevin and I had decided to run up to the Cecil Rhodes Memorial near UCT. We see the pillared, stone building anytime we glance up at Table Mountain, and it happens to have been the spot from which the wild fire originated a few days ago. We’ve heard that the memorial is worth a visit, perched up on the mountainside about ten minutes walk from campus, and last Spring, a couple of students on the trip had frequently run the distance between Mowbray and the memorial. So realizing that we had more than five hours of sitting in transit ahead of us, Kevin and I opted to run up past UCT this morning at sunrise.

The sky was still too dark to leave at 6am, so we waited about half an hour before hitting the quiet streets of Rondebosch on the familiar route to campus. We weren’t exactly sure where the path to the memorial was located, but we had a vague idea of where to go once we got to UCT. The air was cool and refreshing and the roads eerily empty as we rounded the Commons and approached Main Rd. We had a fairly good pace going when we began the ascent toward campus, but the series of stairs and hills really put our legs to the test. After a brief stretch break at the top of Upper Campus, we ran to the north end of the school property and found a step ladder over the side of a fence. When we spotted the trail snaking up the mountain on the other side, we knew we’d found the right trial. It took us about half an hour in total to reach the memorial, which was glowing gold with the first rays of morning sun peaking over the mountain range far across the Cape Flats. The view was gorgeous and the memorial itself was quite beautiful with its bronze lions, stone steps, and statues of Mr. Rhodes (to whose name the property still belongs). There was a certain tranquility to the location in the early morning light and a stillness that was a calming departure from the noise and motion of life at 10 Loch Rd. The air smelled distinctly of burnt wood, and the blackened chars of the recent fire marked a scarred path up the hillside nearby.

I had already packed away my small camera for our trip to Durban, so I didn’t have a chance to take any pictures, but I’m sure we’ll do the morning run again, since it was both exhilarating and refreshing – and of course, gratifying when we reached the top and could survey all of Cape Town’s southern suburbs.