Day 23 - Interlaken

We both slept in till about 9:30 this morning (its crazy that i now consider 9:30 'sleeping in') and picked up our rations of 1 bun, 1 slice of bread, and a small chunk of cheese, that they call breakfast (i feel like i'm in jail), and then just hung around the hostel till 1:30.

There's a ton to do at the hostel, and alot of people left Sunday morning, so the place was pretty empty and me, Rob, Phil (the Aussie), and 2 American guys from Boston had the whole movie room/games room to ourselves. So we signed out a few movies, laid around, and played some foosball and pool. Was the first time in awhile that we just hung out like that.

At 1:30 our guide for canyoning picked us up (5 of us from the hostel) and brought us to their home camp where they hooked us up with full wet suits (overalls and a jacket) and water proof boots, and another jacket for overtop, adn then a lifejacket on top of that and a helmet. Putting all that crap on was pretty crazy adn then the two Swiss guides took the 12 of us (5 Americans from the airforce base just to the north in Germany somewhere and a girl from Vancouver and another one from Hamilton) up into the mountains and then we got out of the van adn walked up even higher up a trail along the edge of the canyon. So we got all the way up to where this canyon started and then climbed down into it.

So for the next 3 hours, we basically climbed down through the canyon. The canyon was about 2 feet wide on average adn was fed by 2-3 degrees Celcius glacier water, and had 20-40 foot walls basically all the way down, so there was definately a feeling like you were in a pit the whole time. So one at a time, we'd go down the canyon through different obstacles like jumping over waterfalls, jumping off cliffs into small pools of water, and repelling (with full rock climbing gear) down rock faces to the bottom of waterfalls. It was the scariest thing i think i've ever done, but also one of the funnest. The adrenaline was pumping so hard through the body that you could hardly notice that you were doing all this in glacier water, in October, in the middle of the Swiss Alps. The scariest part was this 8m (about 25 foot) jump off this one cliff into a small pool of water. It wasn't the jump that was the worst part, it was the 4-5 foot wide landing area between the two rocks that was the problem. So you had to jump hard so you made it far enough over one rock, but you also had to make sure you jumped in a straight line so you wouldn't hit the rocks on the sides (I'm sure if it was in North America they wouldn't let you do it). So they explained this jump to us before we got to it, but we couldn't see it. Then the first 6 people who climbed up to the ledge were so afraid that they couldn't do it right away (Rob included). Five other people jumped and then i climbed up to the cliff, pissed myself, then decided that if i didn't go right that second that i wouldn't be able to do it. So i stepped up, closed my eyes, and jumped. Partway down, i opened my eyes and saw just how tight a jump it was (I could've touched the rocks on either side if i'd spread my arms), but luckily hit the water. The guys at the bottom said that when i jumped, they thought i was going to smoke the one rock for sure, but all ended well, luckily. Rob wen tsoon after and was fine too.

The whole rest of it was awesome too. I sucked hard at repelling (they harness you up and you walk down a cliff). The worst part of that was when you stand at the edge of the cliff, face the guide (who's holding the other end of the rope) and then lean back over nothing but a shallow rocky pool below you. Then you walk backwards down the rock face as he gives you more and more rope. I didn't walk so much, it was more him basically just lowering me down. The other really cool part was right at the end where we laid on our stomachs and stuck our arms out like Superman and went headfirst over two small waterfalls.

Once we got to the bottom, they picked us up and brought us back to camp where we got to take hot showers, and then they fed us a couple beers in the yard looking out over the mountains, adn then took us back to the hostel. It was an inredible experience adn we're both really happy that we did it....and didn't break anything.

The rest of the night we just hung out at the hostel, caught some dinner, and hung out with Phil and the 2 Americans from earlier, and watched some NFL in the bar downstairs. Ended up talking for about an hour with this crazy looking pilot from Belarus. He was pretty interesting and kept saying how much he loves hockey. He smoked cigarettes non-stop and was double fisting a beer and straight vodka.

Heading back to the Cinque Terre tomorrow.