Tamar: We had the priviledge of spending some time with a group of african youth workers and pastors that were getting leadership training in Stellenbosch University. We met Nash from Egypt who we hope to be visiting on our way back to Israel next year. We also met Anand from India (not all were african) who we'll be visiting when we get to India. We attended their graduation ceremony where the Kayamandi Children's Choir performed. One of the youth workers was working with this choir and took them to the States last year to perform to raise sponsors for other destitute children in their township.
The week before last we took a roadtrip out to East London to visit Ric and got to stop in all sorts of places on the way to do and see amazing and fun things. We drove through Tsitsikama National Park and saw the highest bungy in the world. Didn't jump though because it's just a stupid thing to do. We saw Southern Right Whales, a penguin colony and dolphins leaping out of the water as they swam past us. Amazing!!! We went to Jeffery's Bay, the surf capital of South Africa (it features in Piers' favorite movie "Endless Summer II"). We stayed at a UCSA campsite where we were surprised to run into two of the youth workers we had met in Stellenbosch. The biggest shock of all was meeting one of my friends, Andrea Kreller, from college in Canada!
A wildfire had blocked the road on our way back forcing us to stay around P.E. Fortunately we had a place to stay with Erna who we'd met a few days earlier at the USCA camp.
When we came back to Cape Town, I stayed with Mitzi for the next week while Piers went for another week-long trek with Ernst, the horticulturalist from Kirstenbosch. He'll tell you about that now...

Piers here, sorry been so busy with adventures that I’ve had no time to post!

2 weeks ago was the prestigious Cape Town Flower show, and I was helping with some students from the garden setting up the Kirstenbosch stand. The stand was the South African Chelsea Flower Show exhibit, from this year. It was called African Dream and was a combination of a karoo, Tropical forest and Fynbos, garden. The landscaping was all carved wood with woven copper sheeting and copper strelizias. I was amazed at how many plants we crammed into such a small space. It was a constant battle to get our plants in to the site as we were right in the middle and had to negotiate trucks and cars, plants, big holes and a sushi stand. It was certainly a popular stand the public were very excited about it being a “Gold Prize winning Chelsea Flower Show garden don’t you know!”

I just got back from a Plant hunting expedition into the Groot Winterhoek mountains near Port Elizabeth. The trip was hiking along a river but some areas we would go over the hills to cut out some of the big bends. We drove to the river on dirt 4x4 trails through the mountains in our VW van, had a few hard knocks to the underside of the van and lost the number plate but got to the farm at the start of the gorge. It started to rain, we rigged up a spare flysheet and collected a whole cooler bin full over night. The weather showed signs of improving in the morning so we set of down river; it kept raining periodically which had us diving into caves and under rocks. We survived on bread and cheese triangles and when the bread ran out we went onto peanuts and raisins. In the evenings we had gourmet tinned curried fish and pasta, great survival food. Towards the end of the first day we saw on the map that a 4x4 trail crossed the river and over the hill cutting out a loop of the trail started bad then degenerated into a animal trail and in the dark we lost it totally, then it started to rain! Bundebashing through the undergrowth with our headtorches and following the GPS, we found another trail and then quickly got back on track, and camped out on the nice big porch of a deserted holiday home. Next we carried on along the river but this time there was a cow trail, we just followed the cowpats for miles, then partly as a shortcut and partly to see some more habitats we headed 500m straight up the saddle of the hill and left the succulents on the lower slopes and into the fynbos at the top. On the cliffs at the top we found Haworthia and small succulents sheltered in small cracks. At the top of the hill was meant to be a hiking trail but this also turned out to be a phantom on the map, so we went straight down into the valley through some giant cycads. It didn’t look very far to the road and car, but we could see that we were still much too high, we entered a thick forest and then climbed down numerous waterfalls. The valley got deeper and steeper as we continued we kept hoping that the next waterfall wouldn’t be to big for our little six metres of rope. The daylight ran out and rather than try to go any further in the dark we set up camp in the valley with a deep pile of leaves and fern branches to sleep on and just had to be careful not to roll over in the night and end up in the stream. Next day continued down the ravine tying our rope on to big podocarpus trees and dangling past strange succulents in dark shade. Eventually emerged victorious from our daring mission and walked on a trail that took us to the car. On the way passed a area where the Ministry of Agriculture were funding research in to growing Portalacaria for animal food. Its very good apparently in these dry conditions. We camped in the shadow of Cockscombe Mountain our destination for the next day, our site was soft grass growing next to a leaking wind pump. In the morning we drove towards the 4x4 trail that would take us more than half way up the 1759 metre mountain, not surprisingly the trail was impassable and we had to started from the bottom 400 metres, there was a path however and it took us past a cave with bushman art high in the mountains. The peak of the mountain was still towering above us. The trail was marked by small piles of stones and we followed these straight up the cliff along narrow seemingly impossible ledges and up again we made it all the way up and back in a day on the way back we stopped for a break in a mountain hut built in a cave they obviously didn’t believe in roughing it as it had a shower and a flushing toilet. Well we made it back to cape town and now we are getting ready for leaving, and saying goodbye to all our new friends.