Grade 5 Ice Bath

From Nice we travelled to Lauterbrunnen in Switzerland. We were greeted with nice sunny days of about 30 degrees celsius, blue sky, green grass, flowing waterfalls and snow topped mountains. It truly was an incredible site, we must have filled a memory card just of the picture postcard scenery.

Our first day we decided to do some walking and hiking, first to Tremmelbache Falls. It snowed overnight just on the mountains, so it was even more pictureesque. It was a 40 minute walk to get to the falls. Tremmelbache Falls are 10 natural falls within the mountains. The force of the water was incredible, you could hardly hear yourself talk through the sound of them. Next we took a cable car up to a town called Grutschalp. We walked a bit around and got some more amazing photo's - views were even better from this distance. We then hiked down, it was a very steep gradient and about 2km's in distance, it was difficult but you always feel so much better of the achievement when you look up and see how far you have come.


A lot of extreme sports are done in Lauterbrunnen as it's just the perfect place for it and we chose to do some white water rafting on our second day there. Due to the glacier melt and the rain from a few days ago, the rivers were really high. The water was about 2 degrees so we were given full wetsuits to wear. You know its going to be a good ride when the guides are looking out the window really excited saying, its so high and check out the rough patches, its going to be a good ride today. The guides were excellent (and rather nicely built and good looking might I add) and we learnt soon that as long as we listen to them, we shouldn't be falling out the boat. Our trip was a little more exciting as we had an experienced guide and a trainee, the trainee taking the reins most of the time and didn't quite manouver the boat away from the really high rapids, meant we had a great soaking and more turbulent waves than normal, we LOVED it!!! We had a few Grade 5 rapids which are the highest they allow rafting to go through and really was exciting! While down the river at a safer place, the guide asked if we wanted to swim the rapids, so in we went to the very refreshing water and swam along the boat - just a fantastic experience. And the bonus, they took heaps of photo's we didn't even know about and gave them to us on a disk to take away!!!

While there we also saw lots of paragliders, skydivers and some base jumpers. We saw the first base jumper who had a flying suit on and almost made it across the valley before pulling his shute about 15m above the ground. We stood there to watch the others jumping for about 15 mins, trying to spot them as they fall which is much quicker than you realise. They are adrenline junkies, no other word to describe these crazy guys but great to see! We had a few of them in the bar later that night with a video of their jumps and it was surprising to see all the preparation they do before actually jumping. Not a bad idea considering though.

You can't visit Switzerland without a mention of the chocolate. Swiss chocolate is great, and of course it's so cheap there. Our last night, we sat at the reception of our hostel/camping ground with the Limoncello cooling in the river (yep it was that cold) eating good swiss chocolate. Can't complain about life!!!!

Cheers

L&S