Hello all

The seminar I gave last week was alright. Actually, I though it was terrible really. I don't know why I was feeling so disorganized. I certainly got away with a lot. When I finished, I got almost no questions, and a bunch of blank looks. It didn't really register with me until then that I was talking to a room full of pure ecologists. Thankfully, Anton asked me about my coevolution vs. phyletic tracking slide. A new professor who works on grass systematics came up afterwards and told me he enjoyed it. He said I was "lucid." I sort of felt like he was winking at me a bit, like, 'hey, I speak your language, I know what you were talking about.' I feel pretty mediocre about the whole thing.

I hung out last weekend with a girl named Deepti who is a Junior Officer for the US Embassy. Basically, she does research for our Ambassador to South Africa so he doesn't look like an Idiot. What a different world. I went to meet her and her friends from Pretoria, and they were staying at the Deputy Ambassadors place in Bishops Court. Bishops Court is the highest rent district in the Western Cape. Apparently, they were the first people to stay there in almost two years! Posh place! Anyhow, we went to see the District Six musical at the Baxter. District Six is an area right at the base of Table Mountain in Cape Town where there used to be a Colored Township. In the early sixties, with the Groups Area Act, they moved all the people out and bulldozed the place. You can still see the empty spot on the Mountain. No one would buy the land due to the politics involved. The government doesn't know what to do with it really. If they give it to the people without any organization, they will probably just build a shanty town. I think now they are trying to track down the families that used to live there, and have promised to build them houses on their old plots.

Anyway, I almost didn't get a ticket as they were completely sold out. But then this South African family came up wanting a refund on an extra ticket and the lady at the booth directed them to me. So I sat with them. They were very nice, offering me chocolate covered malt balls, explaining things and interpreting the Afrikaans jokes for me. The performance was very good. Afterwards, all my friends could say is that they didn't understand half of what went on.

I've been on a couple trips since I wrote to you all last. No real luck on the fly side, but we got some good hiking in. On the Krom River Hiking Trail in Du Toits Kloof (in the Limitberg), Rika and I found this waterfall that must have been about 100 meters tall that feed this gorgeous pool. If Benny, the orchid guy hadn't been there, Rika and I would have done some skinny dipping.

Oh yeah, and we saw the first Disa uniflora of the season up there. This a spectacular red orchid that is the emblem for the Western Cape. It was growing right out of the cliff.

I did get some swimming in on my last trip though. I tagged along with Terry Henderson, a moss systematist, Tony Varboom and some others up to the Groot Winterhoek wilderness area. Kind of a low key field trip. We stayed at a little farm cottage just outside the reserve. I found out from the Field ranger that the area around De Tonk had burned last year. So we tried to hike out there. Inevitably, we were distracted by several great swimming spots, which was fine because it was really hot! Around one'o'clock, Terry's wife Tracy and this brit girl Dawn collecting Aspathalus proclaimed they weren't going any further. I left them to have lunch and trucked on. I found the spot the ranger was talking about, but the veld looked too old to have burned this year. I could see more burned areas in the distance that looked like a three hour walk away. But I knew they wanted to get back. If I would have known better, I would have planned to camp out there that night and come back the next day. Shame.

Back at the lunch spot, Tony and his girlfriend Nicky were being attacked by man eating fish (not really, but they were nibbling pretty hard). I put my foot into the water and basically got rushed! I could feel their little teeth. It didn't hurt, but it was a bit unnerving.

I decided that the Winterhoek trip was part of my Thanksgiving vacation, so I don't feel so bad about not catching any flies.

Take care,

Shelah