Day 10 - 14, Clarens, Switzerland

Dad was waiting for us at the station when we got to Montreux, and we actually managed to fit our two trolleys, two large backpacks and two small backpacks into their Peugeot 107. The real welcome came with the pisco sours we had as soon as we got home. Many more of those shall be drank in Chile and Peru I'm sure. Although on the first day the weather was sunny and warm, it changed for the worse the next two days, so we spent them mostly at home, relaxing, eating and also sorting some final bills and canceling contracts from our apartment in Dublin. We also took my parents to see a movie, and as usual Montreux did not have too much on offer in original version, so we saw Pirates of the Caribbean IV in 3D, and we actually all really enjoyed it. It might be a bit long, and I find 3D a bit annoying but this movie was pretty entertaining.

We had thought of doing some treks around Lake Geneva, with the good intention of training a little bit before heading to South America, but the weather so far had not been on our side, so we had only managed an hour and a half walk by the lake shore, but on the last day the sun came out again, and we decided to do a 3 hour trek around Glion. We left early after breakfast, got our bags (which we didn't really need but wanted to try out) and walked to Montreux train station from where the walk started. The trail took us quickly down by the river, where we left the town of Montreux behind us and we were suddenly surrounded by lush green trees and plants, which looked more like a Central America jungle than the Swiss Riviera. The path continued and started to climb steeply into a forest by the mountainside, ending up in Glion with a good view of the lake, even being able to spot my parents house from there. The way down was mostly through steps back to the train station.

The trek had opened our appettite quite a bit, so we welcomed the BBQ my parents had for us to send us off. We also got to see and spend a bit of time with Brendan, Anoushka and my niece Shana, and then it was off to the train station again, to catch the night train to Hamburg.