Team Mara paddle!
Steps: 8,500 plus rafting!
We didn’t get up til 10 today, but when we did move our butts it was one of thos surreal “walk out and be surrounded by the Swiss Alps” moments – beautiful.
As we were walking through town the sun came up over the mountains, another ‘oh ah’ moment. We stocked up on the Swiss chocolate, and I bought myself a real Swiss army knife for camping. Lija and I had the nicest hot chocolates over the terrace of an outdoor cafe watching the snow capped mountains, and then went back to change into our bathers to go white water rafting!
It was gradient 3/4 but I thought it was rather tame. There were maybe ten rapids and a lot of paddling along. We had a couple from our bus with us – Fran and Craig, who are from New Zealand. Two raft loads of 8 went out with a leader each. Lija and I were the least scared so we sat up front and Corin, our leader, who sits at the back said the front leads the rest, so we had Team Lija and Team Mara and Corin would assess what was coming up and call commands – forwards together, Mara backwards, Team Lija get down, etc.
One of the small Canadian girls fell out of the other boat but we had no problems until… there was a section of flat water that Corin said we could get out quickly and float along, but stay close to the boat. So most of us were floating around, relaxing, enjoying, and then Corin yells its time to get back in, it was getting rough again up ahead.
Half of them got back in and Lija and I were last and it started getting rough – I had the British guy and girl grab me by my life jacket and pull me in (lovely look sprawled out on our tums with butts in the air), same with Lija further down, till she calls out ‘I’m not the last!’ and we all looked back to see the Korean guy still out there floating along. We’re all yelling ‘Swim towards the boat’ and Corin’s yelling at us to grab the oars and paddle upstream´- fat chance, didn’t do a lot but hold us there which didn’t matter because the Korean guy swam away from us towards the shore.
Well, Corin yells to the Korean girl ‘If you want to save your husband, grab an oar and paddle’ and Lija and I were trying to tell her how to do it! The other boat picked him up and floated down to us and he’s still sitting there, so Rich, the Kiwi leader, gave him a push and said ‘Get back on your own boat!’ Afterwards we found out the Korean couple couldn’t swim – she didn’t want to go in the first place ‘I scared’ – even though everyone had to sign wavers saying we could swim!
So when we floated out to the lake Corin’s like ‘Anyone who CAN swim can jump out for a swim!’ but yeah, Rich was saying the Koreans tend to be weaker – they don’t put their muscles into paddling.
The next drama for the night, we were having cheese and bread and cake and drinks afterwards and I had a coke, well, I’m 99% sure that I swallowed a bee, because there were heaps around, but I thought it was a piece of bread that I was eating at the same time. I wasn’t dead after a couple of minutes because I know I’m not allergic, but my throat was killing through to my ear so I think I was stung when it went down.
I tried everything – Telfast, Panadol, icy pole, swig (or two) of whisky – to take away the pain. Lija wouldn’t let me sleep in case I went into shock or something, but I did rest. By 7 I was starving and Fran and Craig came knocking. We invited them to come out to town to Hotel Overland for Cheese Fondue – between us we had a kilo of cheese! To dip we had bread and potatoes, and a mix of chives, onion, spring onion, cummin seeds, pepper and garlic for flavour.
I couldn’t eat a lot because of my throat, but the cheese was so strong – the smell and taste. We were sat outside next to the fishtank, and one of the waiters came to fish several times. The waiter must have free-poured my vodka and cranberry juice because it was almost half/half, but it did succeed to numb my throat a bit more! Lis and I had a scoop of Swiss chocolate ice cream afterwards to cleanse the pallate.
Lis didn’t actually get to paraglide because the weather turned bad, and they said it would snow overnight in the Alps because of it.
Tags: Travel
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