Well what can I say..? Zermatt was awesome!! We arrived in Zermatt late Sunday arvo from Tasch not having booked any accom. (as was to become our tradition) and quickly set about finding some. Unfortunately, every reception in Europe is closed between about 11am and 5pm so we had to wait around with our bags for a bit (we busted into the youth hostel to borrow their computer and warmth). Eventually we booked a couple of nights at the Matterhorn hostel which was cosy but nice.
We decided to spend our first day going for a walk in the 'hills' (read mountains) surrounding Zermatt. The walk was great tho the path was snowed under and slighlty difficult to follow in sections. Walking on the 1st day however turned out to be a great decision because the following 3 days were absolutely perfect weather and we spent them all skiing.
Sarah had never been skiing before, let alone touched real snow, so it was a pretty steep and spectacular learning curve. We started off catching the Gournegratbahn up to what we had been informed was the easy slopes. Well Sarah had never heard such lies in her life. The runs were wide and long and covered in fresh snow - which only served to give Sarah more ground to crash on. The views of the Matterhorn and surrounding mountains were spectactular and on the second day we caught the cable car up to one of the highest peaks. The cable car ride was slightly unnerving but definitely rewarding. We even discovered an underground ice cave at the summit.
Sarah also fared better on the 2nd day and we found a nice long baby run to get a bit more practice on. We'd reduced the crashes per day to about 4 by this point. This was down from about several thousand the day before however and Sarah was feeling almost everyone of them. To her credit she backed up for a 3rd day and we found a couple of awesome runs down from the Matterhorn Glacier Paradise. We even 'accidently' skiied down a medium run which both parties survived admirably (except for a teary incident towards the bottom of the last slope). Sarah has just informed me she will tell the real story in a post of her own shortly...
So skiing was fantastic and the weather was brilliant so we had a ball in Zermatt. To aid in our recovery each day we decided to hit up the local 'apres ski' bar which was totally bangin from about 5pm to 9.30pm each night. Their lime margueritas (read tequilla slushies) were fairly potent and the bar was attached to an Irish pub. St Patrick's day just happened to fall during the week we were there so we were forced to attend. Massive. The dude on the piano was insane, like actually.
It seemed that the second we left the ski slopes the weather turned bad. We had intended to drive to Interlaken from Tasch on the Friday (that would be Good Friday) via the shortest route. The roads were completely snowed under, visibility was down to about 100m and our Peugot was equipped with neither chains nor winter tires. Well, we were first stumped by closed passes, then the road to the car train to Kandersteg was closed just as we got to the turn-off. By this time we'd been driving for about 3 hours and it seemed every car in Switzerland was in the same situation. We eventually had to go via Bern (which is 'slightly' out of the way for those without maps handy) and stuck to motorways, on which we were almost able to hold an average speed of 30km/h!! Exciting times. Our trip also included a particularly hairy moment trying to cross a fairly low level pass - think brakes fully locked, car still sliding..
Well we eventually made it after dark to our night's accom which we had actually managed to pre book. Unfortunately we could only manage to book the one night on the easter weekend so the fun continued...
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