Biking and kayaking

A couple of weeks ago Roy and I drove to Interlaken to take advantage of a nice gesture from some friends of ours. They gave us a voucher for two to go kayaking and bike riding. We drove to the bike hire place and were greeted by a 'kiwi' lady who thought that we were a tad crazy for driving two hours to Interlaken to kayak on a day that didn't have perfect weather. It was a bit cloudy and there were some rain showers but overall a beautiful day. She gave us some nice, expensive bikes and told us a nice biking route and before long, we were on our way. We rode through some lovely countryside and eventually we started ascending and leaving the valley. It was tiring work but once I got a hang of the gears on the bike, it wasn't too bad. The gears were very fancy so it made it a lot easier than it would have been on a cheap bike with bad gears. Eventually we got to a stage where I couldn't carry on any further because I knew that we had to ride back. It wasn't exhaustion that prompted the turning back but the fact that the fancy bike seat was super uncomfortable and my butt was so sore. It was a fun ride back, despite my sore bottom because most of it was downhill. It was quite exhilarating zooming down the hill.

We made it back to the bike hire place, said goodbye to the lady and drove to our next adventure - to a little town next to Lake Brienz called 'Iseltwald'. Iseltwald is a mostly car free village (except for people staying in hotels and residents), so we parked our car and wandered down the hill admiring the views as we went. The lake and it's surrounds were rather stunning and it was exciting to think that we were about to go kayaking on it.

Unfortunately because we don't have a waterproof camera, we didn't get any photos. But, it was really beautiful. We kayaked for about two hours around a tiny island, along the shore and almost to the other side where we got caught in a small storm which caused some fun, little waves. It was so much fun. We even managed to not capsize the kayaks.

After our magnificent, lake adventure we walked back to the car and took a rather scenic journey back to Martigny. We were going to take the Furka Pass but since the weather wasn't so good, we took the Grimsel Pass which was a little bit quicker. Close to the top we were surrounded in eerie, dense clouds which made for a bit of a scary drive but once we were out of the cloud we saw some beautiful views. It's amazing how much the landscape changes as you drive higher. It's so rugged and looks almost untouched. Beautiful!

I'm so glad we got to experience that. It felt like we were on holidays for a week instead of just on a day trip.