Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland

22nd - 25th July

We were most looking forward to going to Lauterbrunnen as it looked like a crazy place, it's know as the vally of 72 waterfalls, plus we were going to be white water rafting too. First things first we had to get there... the traffic was crazy but only while waiting to go through a tunnel, we later realised after waiting almost an hour in traffic the tunnel was 13 miles long and can only have so many cars going through it at a time.

Several hours after leaving Milan we finally arrived at the camp and wow the place was amazing, there was a three hundred foot waterfall just across the road and paragliders every where. We were greated with swiss chocolate YUM! And shown to our dorm by an english guy lucky enough to work out there.

we arrived quite late so after dropping our bags and saying hi to our bunk mates we went off to the kitchen to make some food. After some yummy cheap home made food we found a fresh water river which with the mountains and waterfall in the background just looked phenominal!

The first night sleep had mixed reactions.... Liam slept amazing on the top bunk after being asked by Cobi to swap beds, and Cobi slept awfully as she got eaten alive (27 bits in one night... Ouch!) obviously we were a little worried that it might be bed bugs, so we head to reception for help. They decided to move all of us to another cabin and gave us 20 swiss frank each to wash all our clothes. About four hours later we had cleaned everything and had very little dry clothes, but we didn't let this ruin our afternoon of white water rafting.

White Water Rafting - If you have never been white water rafting it's a must do because it's amazing, but what made it that much better was the fact that we were rafting in an ice cold river in the swiss alps, (lutschine river) amazing! We were aloud to get into the river a couple of times when we hit calm points, it was so cold it litrally took your breath away! We were the only ones in our boat crazy enough to get in, the rest were mainly from australia and are used to slightly warmer weather. Once you got over the initial plunge it was lovely just floating down stream feet first, that is until it's time to swim back to the boat you quickly get very cold. Due to it not being very deep you couldn't just jump into the river, instead you had to sit on the edge of the raft and fall backwards, this is so you don't hit the floor. Never the less if your as lucky as Liam you will fall in on top of a hidden rock.... Ouch! Needless to say Liam spent the next week with a big old bruise on his back.

After spending the afternoon rafting we went back to camp, we put our clothes in the dryers again hoping that at least our pj's would dry ready for bed. We went and made some food then went back to check on our clothes, only to find that they were still damp... Great! We spend about 20 minutes drying our pj's in the bathroom under the hand dryers, bad times.

The next day we decided to go to a place called "The Trummelbach falls" so we hung our still wet clothes out to dry and went off in search of the falls. twenty minutes later we had found them. The Trummelbach falls are ten water falls hidden inside a mountain, simply amazing! We spent a couple of hours inside the mountain admiaring the amazing water falls, our favourite was the cork screw water fall. Just as we were leaving on our way back down the mountain Cobi had her highlight moment of the whole trip, when a butterfly landed on her hand! (For those of you that don't know Cobi loves butterflies) Amazed and excited she shouted for a photo just before it flew away. We didnt get far before it landed on Liam's hand, quickly Cobi swooped and got it back..... Just as Liam was taking a photo it flew onto Cobi's cheek and then her nose! Needless to say Cobi was very happy at this.

A little bit of luck was followed by more bad luck later that day back at camp.... When we got back we checked to see if our clothes were dry yet?!? Not quite but the sun was shinning and it was lovely and warm out. So we left them to dry and head to the local town to find a supermarket. After choosing some food for dinner, we left the shop to head back to camp, only to be horrified to find the floor soaked! During the twenty minutes we were in the shop the sun had gone hidden by a blanket of cloud and it had poured down with rain. We were horrified as our nearly dry clothes were still hanging outside back at camp. To make things worse on the fifteen minute walk back to camp it started to rain once again. By the time we got back to camp everything was soaked again, including the only dry clothes we had (the ones we were wearing). Luckily we found a warm drying room that is used during the winter for ski clothes, so we hung everything up in there for the night hoping it would dry quickly as we were leaving for munich in the morning.

So to sum up Switzerland, there were highs and lows but over all we loved the place and are eager to go back again!

So we finilly got our clothes dry ready to head back towards germany. Munich here we come again!