Sunday 9 July 2023
This morning we got up at 4:30am and left our hotel in the dark at 5am to drive 3 hours west through the Alps and look for ibex on the Niederhorn, a small mountain near Interlaken. Mammal-watching is a hobby with weird habits. And we were a bit miffed that we hadn’t spotted a single chamois or ibex in the Dolomites over five days.
But anyway, it was actually really nice driving along the empty roads, watching the sun slowly rise over the mountains, marvelling at how scenic and neat Switzerland is, chewing through the very average breakfast rolls our hotel had left for us last night.
I think I’d probably got a bit fixated on an article that explained that you needed to get the first funicular + cablecar up the mountain in the early morning to stand a good chance of seeing the ibex, because when the car park machine only took coins and so I had to download a new parking app with almost zero 4G reception, and the funicular ticket office only opened 5 minutes before the first departure and every customer ahead of us seemed to take an age to serve, I almost exploded in frustration. Well, when you start at 5am start and arrive in plenty of time after a 3 hour drive it would be frustrating to be stalled by a tardy ticket office!
In the event, the funicular didn’t depart on time anyway so all was well. We set off from the top cablecar station and spotted our first ibex less than five minutes later. They were very chill and we walked around to be only about ten metres away to photograph them.
We saw four more ibex on what turned out to be an epically beautiful little hike along the Niederhorn ridge to a high point called Gemmesalphorn (which I think must translate as “peak plagued by flies”). Apart from the ibex, there was a huge alpine valley to our left, a turquoise blue lake behind us, and a panorama of the highest and most snow-capped Alps to our right. So this pretty wild attempt to spot some ibex ended up with a walk that rivalled our best Dolomite hike for views!
Though the self-service restaurant at the top of the cablecar didn’t in any way rival Dolomite rifugios for food – lunch was a massive and starchy potato rosti with bratwurst.
Oh, and I mustn’t forget the cheeky choughs! These Alpine corvids are remarkably habituated, through many years of being fed tidbits by hikers. When you sit down anywhere and take your pack off, a half-dozen of them will circle, land and then hop to within a foot of your feet in the hopes of snacks.
From here we finally fled north, crossed the border into France (once you get into Europe, you can simply go anywhere and there are just no borders) and found a cosy chambre des hotes to stay the night.
PS: we could have parked by the cable car and skipped the funicular… but crucially the lakeside funicular had an underground car park. Well, it was 28C today, we couldn’t leave the car in the sun! The wine, remember the wine.
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