If you know where to look and when to go, these mountains will fill you with awe and wonder.

We were staying in a cottage called Hoek Sonder Koffee in the Cederberg with some friends who'd arrived a few days earlier. It was the spring side of winter, so there'd been enough warmth in the days for the plants to declare summer to be on its way.

The previous day the weather had been raw and wet, today it was sunny, the following day it would rain, displaying the area's interseasonal mountain character.

We often stay in that cottage and have explored the mountain trails and streams for years, examining many caves with /Xam rock art. It's isolated, rustic and perfect if you're not fussy about the small stuff.

After breakfast we carried a basket of bananas and apples - padkos - to the trusty Nissan X-Trail and set off down the track past the dam, now overflowing after years of drought, past the resident herd of eland and through two farm gates to the gravel road.

The gravel took us to the tar which runs past Traveller's Rest and The Englishman's Grave in Agter Pakhuis, then on to more gravel and down a long pass on the lesser-travelled R364.

Behind us were the peaks of the high Cederberg...