Swiss alps

Woke up today in the swiss alps... clouded over and raining :(

The plan was to take a train up to the mopuntain, but last night renna told us that the ski place was closed as its the end of the session, so that along with the weather made us decide to can heading up, and to check out th local area instead. Ian went and talked to reception and found out about a cable car and nature walk you can do, and a cool water fall that has cut its way into the rock, so we got tickets and headed off.

we headed through town and stopped at a phone booth, megan rung Barb and talked to her and Rob for a while, then jumped onto the cable car and headed up the hill for a walk. The veiws from the cable car where amazing, we where in a glacial vally, the vertical sides, maybe 1.5Km wide.... and all snow topped. We didn't go upto the snow line at all, but there was abit of snow in the lee of trees and stuff that hadn't defrosted since the last snow....

we walked for about an hour, just going slowly taking in the sights and taking pictures along the way, stopped at a little hill side town for lunch, there was a statue there for the guy that invented Slalom racing... and hotel after hotel after hotel. By this time the weather had cleared up so we decided to take a cog train up abit higher to see the veiw... this thing is basically a train, but instead of driving wheels it get pulled up by a cable... and it goes almost vertically. we climbed about 4000m in this thing, jumped out, had a look at the veiw and got more pictures then headed back down, caught up with Ian and Simon who had come with us, then started the treck back down. There where two different cable cars going up so we where able to take a different route down. the second cable car was like the other, but instead of following the hillside down, it went stright over a shear cliff, probably 900m high, quite breath taking when you head over the edge and the ground disappears below you.

once down the bottom, we caught a bus to the water-fall that has cut its way into the rock. the swiss have dug tunnels into the rock along side it so you can get a good view, which is great, because in places the water fall is about 10 meters inside the rock face. saying water fall is abit missleading, its actually about 10 of them, draingin the water from 3 different glacers.... its an amazing sight even at this time of year, it must be out of this wold during the spring thaw...

after more awsome views and photos, we headed down, jumped on a bus and headed back to camp. There where two birthdays on tour today, so we had a party, and the theme was "garbage bags". You could wear what ever you wanted, so long as it was made from garbage bags... Megan did an awsome job of putting together our outfits, i went Fred Flintstone, and Megan went as Whilma, The our outfits rocked :) there where some preaty cool others there too.

and that was about it for the day

hope all is well

R&M