After many hours of travelling we got our first decent night of sleep,
yaaay! Although at 8am we were rudely awakened to eat and get ready
for training. This didn't go down well as we had to move all our
mattresses out of the lounge area in order to eat breakfast, saying
this, it required us to actually get out of bed. Which was not the
fastest activity to happen this morning.
After breakfast we piled into the car for the hour and a half journey
to Flims in a car which was tightly packed. It was not
the most comfortable way to travel but we got used to it.
Our first training session was a line walk with 3 loops. Carl, Christie, Kirsten
and Roark headed out slowly, while Tim, Michael and Austin headed out
at a jog. Roark joined in to help out as this was their first time in
the Swiss forests and he had sprained his ankle the day before.
After about an hour and a half of orienteering through some technical
terrain we had all completed our planned courses. This terrain would
be one of the toughest we'd encounter over the course of the week. We
then gathered around a bench in the parking area to eat some lunch,
the standard bread, cheese, ham, tomato and lettuce finished off with
an apple or two.
After lunch we travelled for about half an hour to Ems for our second
training session. This training session was a course used a few weeks
prior for the regional championships so not only was the map quite
nice but there were also a couple of elephant tracks through the
forest. The terrain was much cleaner than the previous session and
much nicer to run through.
Once we had all finished running, we headed back towards the
apartment, getting dropped on the way at the lake for a quick swim.
Whilst the thought of swimming sounded magnificent whilst hot and
sweaty, by the time we'd driven to the lake and walked down to the
waters edge, it was a little bit chilly. Nonetheless Tim and Michael
swam to the island in the middle of the lake and ended up skipping
stones for a while. Since the lake was really shallow in one part,
people had made tall rock towers (sharp, tall cairns) that rose out of
the middle of the lake and so Tim, Michael, Christie and Kirsten swam
over there to add their stones to the pile. Once they had all swum
back, making sure to avoid the fisherman's barbed hooks, we headed
back up to the flat.
Due to the shear number of bums which had to be accommodated in a
lounge designed for three people and since all our beds had been
packed away, we were forced to find innovative places to rest. While
Tim fell asleep on the hard balcony floor outside, Roark brought the
small mattress out into the lounge to lie on. Getting a bit cold he
decided to use the South African flag which was lying nearby as a
blanket. It didn't take long for Karen to crack up, commenting that he
looked like a dead body with the flag concealing his face from the sun
streaming through the window. After we'd gotten over the rather
mundane event that was Roark sleeping we managed to sneak a short nap
in before dinner.
For dinner we had pork fajitas (which was meant to be chicken fajitas,
but we were yet to find chicken in any shop) with potatoes, peppers,
tomato, carrots and rather nice home-made sauce.
Once all the food had been eaten (and i mean all of it), which didn't
take long, we were ready to head to the games room to try out hands at
some table-tennis and foosball. With so many people in the games room
it was hard to keep track of everything that was going on, but in
amongst the chaos a few competitive moments popped up. Roark and Tim
had a tough table tennis battle which Tim took 3 games to 2, whilst
Austin and Carl battled it out in a near endless game which totalled
more than 120 points. We then all crowded around the foosball table
for some competitive and entertaining games with nearly everyone
having a hand in each game.
Then came the time for Michael and Austin to head back to their
apartment in town. Kirsten decided to go along for the ride so she
could get hold of WiFi while the rest of us decided to hit the sack
early.
Illegal moment of the day
- Not paying for parking in the middle of
the forest (only because we didn't know we had too).
Hoppla of the day
(actually quite a journey), without the car key's.
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