The Mount Kilimanjaro virtual challenge is one of the many The Conqueror Virtual Challenges. The description of this challenge is as follows:

Sometimes the mountain will come to you, but after you complete the challenge! The Mt. Kilimanjaro Virtual Fitness Challenge takes you 60 miles (97 km) through the beautiful landscapes of the tallest mountain in Africa. Each time you complete a distance-based exercise activity such as running, walking, cycling, swimming, etc you advance along with the map of the Mt. Kilimanjaro.

I started this challenge on March 8, 2021. Initially I thought to take 12 weeks for this challenge based on 10km per week for ten weeks (2 hikes per week) and two weeks spare in case I couldn't go on a hike in one of the other weeks. This soon turned out to be not really challenging, so I lowered the completion time to 5 weeks with 20 kilometers per week. So I had to start hiking more often than I was used to or to do longer hikes. In the end I completed the challenge in three weeks! So indeed a good motivator to hike more often and/or longer. 

Recent events made me rethink my hiking practices. Safety always was a concern for me, but I realized that still not everything was in place. For instance, what would happen if I was hiking on my own and something happened to me? Would others be able to find me quickly enough? So I started looking for tools that specifically address this issue. But that for later, first what are my normal practices.

At the end of 2019 Curaçao Hiking stops organizing guided hikes. Of course there are alternative hiking organizations; see the overview with links on the home page of this site. An alternative is to go hiking yourself or with a group of friends or similar minded people. To facilitate that I provide several options and tools:

1. A facebook group where you can create an event for your hike so that other members of that group can accompany you on your hike; you need to be an accepted member of that group to use this service
2. Descriptions of most of the trails that Curaçao has offered; these descriptions can be found on this site in the section Hiking
3. A map with the track for most of the trails that Curaçao Hiking has offered; this map can be found as a downloadable picture in the description of the hike on this site in the section Hiking or as a downloadable picture in the Files section of the above mentioned facebook group
4. The track of most of the trails that Curaçao Hiking has offered; these tracks can be found in several places:
   1. Wikiloc 
   2. As a downloadable file in the description of the hikes in the section Hiking on this site
   3. As a downloadable file in the Files section in the above mentioned facebook group
5. Suggestion for tools to follow the track (see the remainder of this article)