Up... and up... and up!

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The second leg of our drive to Switzerland saw us heading ever upward into the mountains. Our first stop for the day was still in Italy – Arona on the edge of the largest lake in Italy. It has a hilltop park with the ruins of a medieval village at the top and the views are spectacular. We spent about an hour wandering around and playing in the playground before getting back into the car for the rest of the journey.

Switzerland has a system of toll roads using a vignette or sticker on the window but there is no short term alternative like in Austria. Whether you use the highways for 2 minutes or 12 months, the cost is the same – about $50 aussie! After a bit of thinking, we figured it was best just to get the vignette as it was going to be too difficult to work out where we would need it and which roads were excluded. They are available at any petrol station so getting it was easy – it’s just the cost that is a bit much as we are only here a few days.

We stopped for lunch at a roadside pull off above the snowline with views of some brave skiers and even braver walkers! It is such a totally different world to anywhere in Australia – none of our alpine regions even get up to this height let alone have the towering mountains above. Em had a bit of a play in the snow before we moved on to find our accommodation for the night. The road wound a lot further up yet as we made our way over the Simplon Pass at over 2000 metres. There were lots of roadworks as the tunnels and avalanche galleries are being maintained or upgraded over the summer months. Eventually we wound our way into Susten where the GPS decided to take us the most twisting, narrow, difficult way through to our destination possible. Sometimes it’s great to get off the track but this was just like driving through suburbs but with no room for oncoming traffic! Eventually we found our way through to our campsite – yes campsite…

We are staying in a Eurocamp park tonight which is basically a caravan park with lots of demountable style cabins as well. At least they have heaters! Eurocamp is an organisation operated out of Britain with campsites all over Europe. They actually don’t operate this one (or any?) but have lots of reserved sites for their customers at the caravan parks they work with. Our cabin is two bedrooms and has its own bathroom and kitchen so it’s quite comfortable. It even has a large deck area at the front and this makes a great spot for dinner in the sunshine. The facilities at the park are great with a swimming pool and a playground so Em was happy at once. The backdrop is pretty impressive though with huge snow-capped mountains all around.

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