Back from Switzerland!

"Here's a towel, in case of a rockslide"...
That is what the guy selling the tickets for the cable car told me. It was comforting to know that the Swiss obviously are familiar with Hitchhiker's. A towel is, after all, the one thing you should never be without. Some might question the effectiveness of a towel against tonnes of hurtling rock; they might think a helicopter and crack team of St. Bernards standing by would be preferable, but not me. (By the way, there were a few small rockslides and an avalanche)

Here is an image from out in front of the hotel.

Yes, it's our very own avalanche bunker! Please wait here on this lovely wooden bench and our first available rescue crew will be with you to dig you out.

My first day of hiking I thought I'd start out easy and so I hiked down a 3000m mountain. I was totally destroyed and spent the rest of my trip recovering from this. On the plus side, look where I had lunch!


The next day I spent recovering by driving over some of the great moutain passes. There are some really fun roads, but I have to say having a turbo really felt like cheating. Those other guys didn't stand a chance.

On the Rösti front, I have to concede that there was some disappointment. It just wasn't the greasy heap of cheesy potato goodness in a skillet that I remembered from the past. Oh well.

The rest of the trip was spent doing hikes of various lengths depending on how lame I felt from the previous days. Every day I was able to touch snow. This is key, because there's something that's just not right about a July without snow. The other main theme of the hikes was a tour of backcountry restaurants. Quite a civilised way of seeing the country. There was, however, the incident with the demonic cows giving me the evil eye:


There was also the free range pork incident for those who have an intrest in these things:


But, most enlightening of all was the sign at the end of the universe:

That's right, the wearing of high heels before you leap off a precipice is strictly forbidden. (Up until the prceipice it is obviously ok).

The rest of the pictures from this adventure can be found here.