The Swiss Alps

We arrived at the village of Lauterbrunnen at around 6pm in the evening and found a great place to stay in the campground at Camping Jungfrau. Imagine (again – boy life’s tough) being nestled between the mountains this time with a roaring glacial stream running past collecting water from the valley’s 72 waterfalls.

Beautiful is not good enough to describe this place, more like breathtaking, and what’s more we had our first snow sighting here! The peaks are 3-4000m high so stay snow-capped even in the middle of summer.

Poor Mulder - how does he put up with views like these... really

SNOWWWWWWW!

We also ran into 2 Kiwis in another Spaceship, turns out we had seen them from a distance at Camping Fusina (Venice) earlier in the trip. We swapped stories and recommendations before heading off to bed being lulled to sleep by the sound of nature.

After a peaceful sleep – the benefits of being in a valley between huge mountain cliffs is that it takes a long time for the sun to rise over the mountains and bake you out of bed.

We spent some time exploring the area around the campground, heading down for photos by the river. Dave dipped his toes in to see what the temperature was like. His report: “Pretty cold!”

Dont fall in...

After shopping for food and Swiss army knives we followed the river along to arrive at its source – the Trummelbach Falls.

En route to Trammelbach falls

Extreme mowing is a sport in Switzerland - no they are harvesting the hay and putting it into rolls for the winter but the mowing involved was pretty intense (not to mention the poor suckers who have to rake it all up into a pile for  the collectors)

Again words cannot do justice to the only waterfall in Europe coming from glacial snow melts where you can trace its origin inside the mountain. You get sprayed by sub 2⁰C water from the 20,000L of water per minute that falls through the mountain carving interesting shapes into the rock and creating a roar that would compete with a helicopter taking off.

Brrrr - im not worried about the children WHAT ABOUT ME!

Getting wet

Amazing rock carvings by the falls

Ok i'm cold now

As we headed back towards the campground we noticed clouds closing in on the valley and right as we got back to Mulder we had a rain shower (luckily we saved the washing we had hung out earlier in the day).

After climbing up inside the mountain we headed back down to the village of Lauterbrunnen to explore some more.

The village was very cute and patriotic to the last little detail, nearly all the houses with little Swiss flags or Swiss flag printed pinwheels out the front. We heard quite a few Aussie accents around the village too.

The next morning we set off early in order to reach the summit of the Schilthorn a 2971m high mountain in the alps with the reported best views of the triple giants of Switzerland (and Europe for that matter) – Eigar (the Ogre at 3970m), Monch (the Monk at 4107m) and the famous Jungfrau (the Virgin at 4158m – Europe’s highest mountain).

Going up...

Ahh the sun finally appears... I dont like chilly morning starts

We bought tickets on the early-bird trip and despite a saving of 40swiss francs we still came away spending AU$165! – but this wasn’t even the really expensive option, a trip to nearly the top of Jungfrau costs 130swiss francs (around AU$156 each!)

First we boarded a cable car in Lauterbrunnen to take us to a train on top of the first escarpment. The train took us along a fairly flat journey to the village of Murren where we took 2 more cable cars, one to the village of Birg and the final one to the mountaintop retreat of Schilthorn.

Longest cable car ride in the world - no towers in between just 1 single expanse (hope the cable doesnt snap

This cable car was (and maybe still is – I haven’t had time to check this fact) Europe’s longest cable car and was a major feat of engineering in the early 60’s. To top it all off the builder was not satisfied with just having the cable car to his name, so on top of the mountain he built a revolving restaurant (the highest in the world).

This is when the place really became famous internationally with the 1968 filming of James Bond – On Her Majesty’s Service taking place in the restaurant (the villain’s lair) and on the surrounding ski slopes. Just to prove it the whole place has 007 everywhere and even has a James Bond Bar – pretty good mileage for a 43 year old movie!

Not cheesy at all

We enjoyed the excellent views of the 3 gigantic mountains as well as several more – all of them still snow covered. On a clear day you can see Mt Blanc (France) and the Black Forrest in Germany. Although a nice day it was hazy and although Mt Blanc was visible we couldn’t make out Germany.

We decided to get some energy after our early morning journey by having a Swiss hot chocolate and vanilla berry tart in the revolving restaurant. Surprisingly the prices were fairly similar to the rest of Switzerland – still expensive but not as bad as we were expecting they could have been considering the location and lack of other alternatives. It was however delicious and aided by the 360⁰ views.

Hot choccy with a view - ahhhh this is the life!

One more sneeky 007 under the cup

After pigging out it was time for exercise so we tested our hiking legs by climbing down to the next little peak below. Here we munched on some lunch (brought with us) and watched the hikers pass by – some in good shape, others in not quite as good shape. We couldn’t believe that only 3 days ago participants in the Inferno Triathlon had run/climbed to the top (a total of 25km) after swimming 3.1km’s, road biking 97km’s and mountain biking 30km’s – Freaks! (the German guy staying next to us did it in 9hrs 41mins).

Interesting that they felt the need to put this sign up... Obviously people have tried to hike in their heels before

King of the world!

Lunch with a view

We climbed back up to the top of the Schilthorn and then got back aboard the cable cars down to Murren. As we wanted to do some hiking (maybe not the 50km round trip) we did the descent from Murren to Lauterbrunnen – not sure what the distance was exactly but it took us about 1hr 45mins.

Damn! Forgot the reverse law of physics - what goes down must climb its way back up again

It was quite steep but we saw some beautiful scenery, including more of the 72 waterfalls.

Intrepid hiker

Over my left shoulder is the escarpment we climbed down

After finishing we headed back to Mulder for a well deserved drink or 2...and another afternoon rainstorm. Seems to be the summer weather pattern here in the Alps.

Now Dave is outside squishing around in the mud in his thongs putting the back awning on for us to sleep in after the rain. His swearing and frustration is quite funny – but I’d better go help him J.