On our second full day in the Alps, we woke up in Wengen, the hillside town on the east side of the Lauterbrunnen valley, where we stayed for two nights at the charming Hotel Bellevue. We headed up the Männlichen gondola only to find fog and clouds and figured it wasn't the best day to hike the Panoramaweg, and so we hopped on a second gondola to reach the next-over town of Grindelwald (which was much larger than we expected!).
We wandered up through the town's streets and hiked up to the station of Bort (around 1570 m). It actually was a bit sunnier at the lower elevation.
We eyed the gondolas the whole way (but actually welcomed the ascension, due to our sore thighs from almost fifteen miles of downward hiking the day before-- going up felt much better than going down!).
Some trail (snail) friends which did not end up as our dinner!
The Swiss love their bänkli (benches) for resting and just soaking in the surroundings.
We treated ourselves with a gondola ride back down to town, because we still could barely tolerate descending!
Kelvin had been interested in trying paragliding over the Lauterbrunnen valley ever since he saw some gliders on the day we arrived. The spots on the west side of the valley were all booked, but there happened to be openings out of Grindelwald! It was not our first time— we had actually paraglided in Miraflores in Lima, Peru in 2009 but my camera was malfunctioning so we had no photo evidence!
We first rode a gondola up to the station of First (2168m, 7113 ft.) and were paired with and attached to a pilot. We were asked to run forward and then leaped off the cliff to be swept around and above the verdant valley below for about 20 minutes of flying time. Kelvin and his pilot took off first, while mine (I think the boss of the organization) was fielding calls about bookings for a few extra minutes.
Kelvin had a great time and even purchased the photo package which his pilot, Reto, took with his GoPro.
I enjoyed myself in the air until about the last two minutes, when the back-and-forth swooping motion started to make me nauseated (I get horribly motion sick on rocky seas but didn't anticipate this being an issue in the air!). Kelvin caught some photos of our descent...
... but thankfully not my upchucking of the tomatensuppe (part of my recent lunch), which ended up on the field right after landing (and, thankfully, not on the leg or shoes of my pilot. Or flying back into our faces while we were still in the air! That would have been the worst!!!!). It took me at least a half-hour before my stomach was feeling at ease again, but we limped back to the station and made our way back to Wengen via train and carried on with our evening. While the experience was thrilling, I'm not sure my stomach can handle paragliding again anytime soon! I think I'll stick to trains, gondolas, or hiking as my modes of transportation down from high altitude from now on!
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