Sunday 21 August 2011

Bernese Oberland & Montreux 21-26 Aug 2011








After Zermatt (http://happyotrekker.blogspot.com/2011/08/matterhorn-hornli-trek-2082011.html), we set our “base camp” at Interlaken to explore Bernese Oberland for the next 4 days.

BO Day 1 (21.8.2011): From Zermatt, we trained for 2:15 hours to Interlaken with two changes at Visp and Spiez. After deposited our luggage at Hotel Lazy Falken, a five minutes walk from the station, we spent the rest of the day exploring the town.

BO Day 2 (22.8.2011): The next day, we trained to Lauterbrunnen and then to Kleine Scheidegg to visit the famous Jungfraujoch (Jungfrau Ridge), the world highest train station built inside the mountain. The excellent weather at Jungfraujoch provided a fantastic 360 degree view of snow field and mountains from the Spinx Observatory. Later in the afternoon, from Lauterbrunnen we bused to Trummelbach (Trummel waterfall) and trekked back along the wanderweg to view other waterfalls before returning to Interlaken by train. Trummelbach Fall is a series of ten glacier-waterfalls nestled deep in a slot canyon carved out by the powerful waterfall itself. The water plunges, slides, jumps, pirouettes, and corkscrews through the sculpted canyon and down to Lauterbrunnen Valley. It is accessible by tunnel-lift and is illuminated.

BO Day 3 (23.8.2011): On this day, we decided to go for a hike in Grindelwald (1034m), a famous mountain resort or playground for hikers and skiers. There were so many trails and we finally decided on Lake Bachalpsee (2265m). We took a train to Grindelwald followed by a cable car to First (2167m) where we started our hike to Lake Bachalpsee. The trail appeared to be quite popular for there was a big crowd at the Lake by the time we reached there at 12.15 p.m. The hike took us 45 minutes. As expected, trail was scenic with Eiger (3971m), Monch (4107m) and Jungfrau (4158m), all lined up in a row, and the Lake was picturesque against Wetterhorn (3692m) and Schreckhorn (4078m). Being energetic, we decided to trek all the way down to Grindelwald. The net drop of 1230m took us 3hours.

BO Day 4 (24.8.2011): After all the high mountains, we opted to explore Lake Brienz and Lake Thun by utilizing the free bus passes for hotel guests. We started the day by taking a bus to Ringgenberg Sage, the first village next to Interlaken at the north-bank of Lake Brienz and trekked along the bank of the lake to Interlaken OST. Lake Brienz is certainly very scenic with its turquoise blue water. The easy trek took us about 2hours. After lunch, we bused to Interlaken West to go to Spital and walked to Weissenau Nature Reserve, an important hibernation and molting site for numerous bird species along the lakeshore of Lake Thun. We spent about 1.5 hours trekking along the lake bank photographing water birds and admiring the rustic scenes.

The following day on 25.8.2011, we trained via scenic Zweisimmen to Montreux at Lake Geneva where we visited the famous Chateau Chillon and the vineyard terraces at Rivaz in the Lavaux UNESCO World Heritage region before returning to Malaysia on 26.8.2011.

For the photographs, please refer to http://happytrekker.shutterfly.com/pictures/11843.

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