Last Sunday I decided to climb the second highest mountain in Namibia, Moltkeblick, with a friend. It is only 10km away from Windhoek. He has been there before, but years ago. The mountain is 2400m high, but you already start at about 1700m. We set off about 9am, asked at the farm for permission to walk on their property and then we are on our way. First we went along an old, disused farm track where grass and flowers grew on the way. My friend could not exactly remember the way he went once, so we just turned to the mountain range after a short while. We climbed up to the ridge and continued along there, first on a kind of path, then just through the bushes and bolders where there was space. We had a great view from up there. I found a lot of beautiful flowers along the way, some of them only come out every couple of years after a good rain. There was yellow and red and purple and white amongst the high, green grass. What looked so beautiful made walking harder, though, especially as one should look out for snakes as well. The longer we continued along the ridge the more evident it became that we should have stayed for much longer on the farm track. Our "way" was up and down, through deer fences and around cliffs. However, I found it a pleasant walk while my friend began to struggle and slow down. Finally, more than 6h later, we reached the top of Moltkeblick which was not very exciting. There was a wind motor and a signal post, all fenced in. So, the way has been much nicer than the destination. We had a short break and then started to make out way back down. This was not easy as the ground was full of medium large, loose stones and it would have been easy to break ones ankles. When we reached the foot of the mountain it was getting dark. We just about managed to identify the farm track and stayed on it through dusk. It was still several km back to the car, there was no moonlight and the way became harder and harder to follow. At some point we lost it and had to return to the nearest fence to find it again. Then we tried with a torch, but it was still very hard to identify the remainders of the track. I already thought we had to stay in the field over night. Finally, 12h after we set off, we reached the car, fairly tired, but happy.
