EcoMiles For A Cause

Beautiful sunny day in Cape Town and appropriate to join the Little Free Library’s birthday celebration! Little Free Library became a nonprofit on May 17, 2012, launching their journey to make books accessible to everyone. This year, May 17 has been declared National Little Free Library Day, making this milestone even more special. They're celebrating with a full week of activities from May 17–23, 2026! Read more at https://littlefreelibrary.org/about/little-free-library-week/. Gavin's Exchange is situated near the main entrance to the Noordhoek Farm Village, Noordhoek Cape Town.

Two completely different organisms in these images, and they’re worth separating because their biology is wildly different.
The big yellow cushion: Fuligo septica — Dog Vomit Slime Mould (a.k.a. Scrambled Egg Slime). This is not a fungus, not a moss, not even technically a plant or animal. It’s a plasmodial slime mould (Myxomycete), which is a protist — a giant amoeboid single-celled organism with millions of nuclei sharing one cell membrane, slowly crawling over rotting wood and engulfing bacteria, yeasts, and fungal spores by phagocytosis. What you’re photographing is the aethalium — the spore-producing fruiting stage that forms when the plasmodium runs out of food or moisture. Within a day or two it’ll harden, darken to grey-brown, and crumble into a cocoa-powder dust of spores.
Composition is fascinating:
• Pigment: fuligorubin A (a tetramic acid derivative) gives the yellow colour and acts as an electron-transport molecule in the plasmodium
• Calcium carbonate: deposited as microscopic granules in the peridium and capillitium — gives it that slightly gritty, foam-like texture
• Heavy-metal concentrator: famously sequesters zinc and other metals (often >20,000 ppm zinc in dry weight) — has been studied for bioremediation
• Slime moulds also exhibit primitive “intelligence” — Physarum polycephalum, a close relative, can solve mazes and reproduce the Tokyo subway map by optimising nutrient flow between food sources
The yellow dusting on the bark itself is something else entirely — almost certainly Chrysothrix candelaris (Gold Dust Lichen) or a close relative. That’s a leprose lichen — no proper thallus, just a powdery crust of fungal hyphae enclosing single-celled green algae (Trentepohlia or similar). The yellow comes from calycin and pulvinic acid derivatives, secondary metabolites the fungus produces as UV screens and antimicrobials. The fine grey-green frilly bits nearby are fruticose lichens (likely Ramalina sp.), which often share the same dead-wood substrates in Knysna’s humid forests.
So in one photo you’ve got a protist, two lichens, and a moss-covered hardwood stump — a nice cross-kingdom snapshot.

Amanita pantherina (Panther Cap)
An introduced European mushroom, brought to South Africa with imported pines. Common in Knysna’s pine plantations, fruiting in autumn after rain.
Identifying characteristics
• Cap 5–18 cm, tan to hazel-brown with a darker centre, fading paler at the margin
• Pure white, densely distributed velar warts on the cap surface (easily rubbed off)
• Short striate (grooved) margin on the cap
• White gills, free from the stem
• Stout pale stem with a pendulous, smooth-topped skirt-like ring
• Bulbous base with a distinct collar-like rim of volval tissue
• Flesh stays white when cut — does not blush pink (key separator from A. rubescens)
• Ectomycorrhizal with pines (and oaks/beech in Europe)
Toxicity and dose
Contains ibotenic acid and muscimol, which act on the CNS. More muscimol-rich than A. muscaria, so coma is a more frequent presentation . Onset is 30 minutes to 2 hours.
There is no clean “safe dose” — toxin concentration varies by specimen, age, and growing conditions. Published clinical reports describe serious poisoning from a single cap or even fragments. Inhibitory and excitatory effects occur in up to 80% and 70% of acute poisoning cases respectively, with intubation needed in around 40% . Children and dogs are disproportionately at risk; a small puppy can be poisoned by a fragment. Symptoms include vomiting, ataxia, hallucinations, muscle twitching, seizures, and coma. Treatment is supportive — get to hospital fast if ingested.

Meerkat National Park is a vast protected area in the Northern Cape’s Nama-Karoo, roughly 90 km from Carnarvon and within the Bushmanland landscape stretching towards Brandvlei. It was declared on 27 March 2020 through Proclamation No. 15 in Government Gazette 43415 , and is one of South Africa’s most unusual parks — its primary purpose is not tourism but the protection of a radio-quiet zone for frontier astronomy.
The park was assembled by the National Research Foundation (NRF) and the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) under the Astronomy Geographic Advantage Act of 2007. A total of 135,245 hectares were secured, compr ising 40 portions of land across the Kareeberg and Karoo Hoogland Municipalities. Beth and Willie Engelbrecht’s book The Lost Tales of the Meerkat National Park documents the 39 farming families whose land was sold to the NRF to make way for the SKA .
At its heart is MeerKAT, a 64-dish radio telescope launched in 2018 and a precursor to the Square Kilometre Array, alongside the HERA and PAPER instruments. The NRF’s South African Environmental Observation Network is also running long-term environmental research, including studies on climate change impacts on the local ecosystem. Since declaration, livestock, internal fences and alien mesquite have been removed, and wildlife is recovering.
The land is owned by the NRF, while SANParks manages the park under a partnership with NRF and SARAO. Visitors are only admitted on preselect days during the year , preserving the radio-quiet conditions on which the science depends.

Karoo National Park, near Beaufort West, sits on one of Earth’s great geological archives — the Karoo Supergroup. These strata record an almost continuous sequence from the late Carboniferous to the middle Jurassic, about 100 million years of environ ments ranging from glacial to arid.
The park rests on the Beaufort Group. The Karoo Supergroup of Permian age consists of the Dwyka Formation, Ecca Group and Beaufort Group, with the Beaufort made up of alternating mudstone and sandstone. Rivers draining the shrinking inland Ecca Sea deposited these sediments from around 265 to 240 million years ago, entombing the terrestrial vertebrates that made the Karoo a global palaeontological archive.
The landscape’s signature came later. Around 180 million years ago, hot dolerite magma intruded horizontally into the existing sediments as sills. Because dolerite resisted erosion far better than the softer Beaufort rocks, differential weathering left the flat-topped hills and the dolerite-capped edge of the Great Escarpment that define the park today.
Straddling the Nuweveld Escarpment, the park spans the Lower Karoo at around 850 m and the Upper Karoo above 1,300 m. The lower plateau — the Lammertjiesleegte plains — carries Gamka Karoo dwarf shrublands on mudstone and siltstone. The middle slopes are a transitional mudstone-to-sandstone zone with grassy and succulent dwarf shrublands. The upper plateau, dolerite-capped with deeper soils, supports Upper Karoo Hardeveld alongside Karoo Escarpment Grassland — the Grassland Biome reaching its westernmost extent.
Thirty percent of Nama-Karoo endemic plants are conserved within the park — a concentrated showcase of dryland South Africa.

Seweweekspoort (Seven Weeks Pass) cuts through the Swartberg range in the Western Cape, one of South Africa’s most geologically spectacular mountain passes. The Swartberg is a fold mountain belt formed during the Cape Orogeny roughly 250–330 million years ago, when immense tectonic forces compressed and buckled the sedimentary layers of the Cape Supergroup. The result is dramatically folded quartzitic sandstone of the Table Mountain Group — you can see the contorted, near-vertical strata in the cliff faces as you drive through the narrow gorge. The rock is extraordinarily hard, which is why the poort retains its steep, cathedral-like walls rather than eroding into a gentle valley.
The pass follows the Huis River, which carved its way through the range over millions of years — a textbook example of an antecedent river cutting down through rising rock. The 17-kilometre gravel road through the poort was first constructed in the 1850s–1860s under the direction of road engineer Adam de Smidt, and the name reportedly refers to the seven weeks it took transport riders to negotiate the route with ox wagons. It was a vital link between the Little Karoo and the Great Karoo, connecting communities like Ladismith to the north. Today it remains largely unpaved and gloriously remote — a living museum of Cape fold belt geology and colonial-era engineering.!

The Knysna Estuary: A Living Treasure
Stretching 17 kilometres inland from the iconic Heads, the Knysna Estuary is one of South Africa’s most ecologically significant estuaries — and one of its most beautiful. Recognised as a National Lake Area and embedded within the broader Garden Route National Park, it supports an extraordinary web of life that few coastal systems can rival.
The estuary nurtures over 220 fish species, serving as a critical nursery for juvenile fish that sustain both commercial and recreational fisheries along the Garden Route coast. It is the last known refuge of the critically endangered Knysna seahorse (Hippocampus capensis), found nowhere else on Earth. Above the waterline, the system supports rich birdlife — from African fish eagles to flamingos — while its fringes harbour remnant patches of rare Afrotemperate forest.
The lagoon’s seagrass beds and salt marshes act as powerful carbon sinks, filtering nutrients and anchoring the entire food web. For the town of Knysna, the estuary is not merely scenery — it is the ecological heartbeat of the Garden Route.

After 16mm or so of rain over the last 24hrs, a pretty morning over Knysna estuary. Wishing all a blessed Easter Weekend.

KAROO ADVENTURE | 19–26 April 2026
Two spots have opened up on Tshephe Adventures’ Karoo Expedition — and this is a special one: it’s Willie Engelbrecht’s final Karoo trip before he steps back from leading adventures after years on the road.
Eight days through the heart of the Karoo: Sutherland stargazing at the SAAO Observatory and SALT, 4x4 trails on the old postal route through the Nuweveld Mountains, game drives in the Karoo National Park, and two days in the remote Meerkat National Park with a visit to the SKA radio telescope array. Campfires every night. Mountain passes, jeeptracks, and wide-open Karoo skies.
Willie is a registered 4x4 instructor, culture and nature guide, and one of the most meticulous trip organisers you’ll find. If you’ve driven with him, you know. If you haven’t — this is your last chance.
Self-drive, self-catering, own equipment. You need your own 4x4 (500km+ range). Two people, one vehicle.
DM me if you’re interested.

Knysna Estuary winds through the heart of the Garden Route National Park — a shimmering labyrinth of tidal channels, sandbanks, and ancient forest meeting the sea between two iconic sandstone Heads. Sailboats rest on glass-still water at dawn, chameleons patrol purple-leafed gardens, and endless beaches stretch into blue infinity. One of South Africa’s most biodiverse coastal ecosystems, it is raw, luminous, and quietly unforgettable.