Who has climbed a mountain before 7 am?

Over the weekend, we had our last travel seminar in Namibia. We traveled to southern Namibia on Thursday afternoon for a weekend full of camping and learning about community based land management. All of our camping sites were beautiful, and it was exciting because the last time I went camping was in high school, and it was fun to sleep in tents and braai outside. On the downside, there were a lot of weird bugs everywhere. There were these little flying green bugs that swarmed the tent in Berseba, and we ended up bringing some of them back in Windhoek because we couldn’t get rid of them. We also saw some little scorpions, and several African armored crickets, which are huge!

African armored cricket

Brukkaros Mountain

this is all you can see for miles and miles

oh camping...

Our second campsite was just outside of Berseba, next to Brukkaros Mountain. On Saturday morning we did not have any activities until 10 am, which meant we had time to climb the mountain in the morning! We left a little before 6 so we would have time to get to the top and still make it back in time for breakfast. Although I’m not a big fan of waking up at 5:30 in the morning, it was nice to be hiking in the dawn, watching the sun rise over the ridge. The first part of the hike was pretty easy. It was uphill, but there was a “road” up to a different campsite, and then a fairly well defined path. At one point there was a small troop of baboons sitting on the rocks above the trail, barking at us and slowly advancing. Amanda barked back at one point, and then realized her mistake as they started moving closer. She was prepared though, and had a rock ready to throw at them. After that point we made sure to hike in groups.

About 40 minutes into the hike, the trail ended and the mountain just rose straight up. But did we let that stop us? Of course not! We started scrambling up the rocks. Some were big, some were small, some were really loose and we started a few small rockslides. There were times we had no idea how we were going to make it to the top, and it was exhausting. The group I was hiking with made sure to take water breaks, and stop every so often to catch our breath and take pictures. After almost 30 minutes of climbing up this mountainside, we made it to the top!

this is how steep the mountainside was!

It was so incredibly windy at the top, but the views were so worth the effort it took to get there. You could see out across the Kalahari for miles and miles, with only one small town in the way. It was also crazy to realize that we were on top of a mountain, and it was only 7 am. It made me feel like I actually accomplished something.

view from the top

Going down was a little more difficult, as I was worried about slipping and falling all the way down the mountainside. But we all made it back safely, although a few people sacrificed their water bottles to Brukkaros. The next day I was extremely sore from climbing up the rocks, but it was a fun activity!