Hard to believe it is late July. The sun will be up soon, topping the peaks with orange light. For now it is dark and 39 degrees F.
It is cold enough here that yesterday afternoon, after our walk in from Leukerbad, we sought out a cafe to sit and drink coffee during one of the afternoon rain showers.
We are staying at Hotel Zur Post, right in the center of the village, next to the church, between two large, imposing old hotels and across from a little stone bridge. It is a nice, old fashioned hotel, and we have a great room, number 21, on the corner with a balcony. We have two large sets of windows, so the room is very light, with great views over the highest mountains, Blüemlisalp Massif and back up the way we came.
There is a lot of hiking in this area, as well as a few mountains to climb and the mountain biking on the ski runs. The trails to Interlaken and the high Alps of central Switzerland pass through here. I am surprised at the number of sports stores here.
Our plan is to hike up to one of the big lakes in the area, explore a little. That will be in the next post.
There is a bus that runs a route in Kandersteg, and you can use it free with the visitor card you get with your room tax. It also drops the price on the three lifts out of town. We took the lift up to the lake, but the rest of our stay we just walked, since the village is pretty small.
Entering Kandersteg, you walk in past farms and scattered houses. The “ own town core” has a couple tall old hotels, some newer ones, a church, and a few restaurants, grocery stores and other stores. Everybody has nice detail work on their buildings, even the newer building. Carvings and paintings and sayings. Our hotel is newer, built in 1900. The one across the street, built in the 1700s, was repainted brown. They just stripped the old brown paint off and discovered amazing detail paintings and scroll work, that they are now restoring. I wish I could see it when it is completed.
The grey Kander River runs right through the town. Actually it rushes, roaring through. The high peaks hold a lot of snow and there are glaciers, and so that means there are waterfalls everywhere you look. All feeding water into the river.
The church next to our hotel bongs on the quarter-hour. It has an interesting wooden ceiling, rather plain windows except one which is a tribute to Switzerland itself, and a funny kind of "hat" looking, red steeple.
It is pretty convenient that the train is here.
An odd thing is that the car-train is located here as well. About every 15-30 minutes a car train runs, hauling cars and trucks through the Lötschberg tunnel to southern Switzerland. This saves hours of driving time. The car-train takes about 15 minutes to cut through the Alps, and you just stay in your car the entire time. It is like taking a ferry to an island.
Some kind of central scout headquarters are located here, on the outskirts of Kandersteg, so there are co-ed groups of boy/girl scouts running here and there. They dress alike, like team colors, and seem to head out on long hikes a lot. I don’t know anything about scouting, but they seem to be mostly European groups, though we have heard some English speaking groups as well. Anyway, sales of Swiss Army Knives are brisk. Every store has them.
We had good, but not remarkable dinners here at the hotel. Sausages one night, pork in mushroom sauce the other. I did not see any laundry facilities here in Kandersteg, not that we needed them.
Overall, this is a nice town, in a great area with a lot to do if you like to hike, ski, mountain bike, climb or para-sail.