There are few places left on earth that scientists haven't visited to collect and study fauna and flora. Unexplored places invoke images of the deep ocean, inaccessible parts of Antarctica, or the highest mountains on Earth. It may come as a surprise that there are a few almost totally unexplored places right here in Namibia and just across the border in Angola. The region that covers north-western Namibia and south-western Angola, called the Kaokoveld, is well-known by scientists and intrepid tourists. Yet the peaks of the highest mountains in the Kaokoveld are so difficult to access that no one has ever scaled them to study the plants and animals that live on what appear from a distance to be inhospitable, barren mountaintops. Until now. During April 2021, a team of adventurous scientists from the Biodiversity Research Centre of the Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST) and the Instituto Superior de Ciências de Educação (ISCED) da Huíla in Angola embarked on a modern-day adventure of discovery in one of the last truly unspoiled remote wilderness areas in the world. Our target: three of the highest mountaintops within the Kaokoveld Centre of Endemism, namely Middelberg in the Otjihipa Range, Serra Tchamalindi and Serra Cafema. The Kaokoveld Centre of Endemism is known for its many plants and animals that occur nowhere else on earth (such species are known as endemic). The Kaokoveld Centre is bordered in the west by the Atlantic Ocean and stretches 100 to 150 km due east through the Namib Desert, the pro-Namib and the Great Escarpment to the inland plateau of southern Africa. Elevation ranges from sea level to 2065 m in the Ovahimba Highlands just south of the Kunene River and 2573 m at the top of Brandberg mountain (Namibia's highest peak) in the southern Kaokoveld. The area receives mainly summer rainfall that ranges from an average of less than 50 mm in the west to up to 300 mm in the east - but it is highly erratic and patchy - while the low-lying and escarpment areas regularly receive fog from the bordering Atlantic Ocean. All of these physical conditions make living here extremely challenging, which is why so many plants and animals are uniquely adapted to this harsh environment.