Extreme Sports

I went hang gliding yesterday. The operator, Bernie, was extremely Australian. We journeyed to the takeoff point with AC/DC's "Back In Black" pounding out at top volume. The takeoff was a little hairy, but after that things were smooth and I had an awesome flight. Hang gliding is much better than paragliding because you get to do dives, stalls and sharp turns. The dives were unbelievable. You basically go into freefall for a few seconds, pointed straight towards the ground, then as the pilot pulls it out of the dive, it feels like an invisible hand wrenches the glider skyward, with you attached.

Then today, canyoning. I was a little leery of this since the last thing I want to do at this early point in the trip is break a leg or something. Having talked to people who did it, I decided I'd be OK and signed up for the all day trip, the same canyon Stu did when he was here (but not the same as the canyon of the 1999 canyoning disaster, which is closer to Interlaken). It was a pretty fun experience, and didn't seem too dangerous as long as you listened to what the guides said. Nobody on my trip got injured at all, unless you count one girl who had a recurrence of an ongoing injury and did the last half of the canyon (skipping the jumps and so forth) with a dislocated knee!

Interlaken is in amazing country. The town is surrounded by imposing mountains, with snow-covered alps towering over the top. You tend to walk everywhere gazing off into the distance in random directions, admiring one or other of the huge mountains. I like mountains, and it makes a nice change from the Netherlands, which was inhumanly flat. I have two more days here. I think I'm done with extreme sports. The plan is probably to journey to the top of some nearby mountain called Jungfraujoch, by train, and also to go on a 4 hour hike available near Interlaken. On the 27th I'm on the move again, with a 6 hour train ride to Munich.