The most gorgeous lake of Switzerland: Gelmersee

If you told me 3 months ago that crystal clear blue lake water exists, I would not believe you. I thought it was something that just existed on photographs, when it was heavily edited. If you also told me that the crystal clear blue lake water can turn into the most gorgeous deep reflecting green colour when the weather conditions change, I would probably say you are insane. And I was partly right, because insane it is. But... it exists!

The road to getting to the gorgeous Gelmersee did somehow turn out different than we had imagined. We envisioned this adventurous hike up to the Gelmersee with our tent and gear packed because we wanted to go wildcamping. However, when we were packing our stuff, the clouds above us grew closer with the minute and turned from light white to dark grey. When it started to rain heavily, we were sitting in our car, hopeful and not yet defeated. However, after half an hour, when it also became foggy, we hesitantly said that maybe it was a better idea to go another day. We drove away with disappointment in our hearts, because this was an adventure we were really looking forward to.

However, soon enough another great idea surfaced. Why don't we go wildcamping at a farmer's land? And so we drove to the closest village and went all the way up to the mountain top. There we asked someone that was passing by in the rain if we could set up our tent near his farm. The man was grumpy and snapped at us that we should look for the nearest "official" camping site. That did not scare us away, on the contrary, this gave us energy to ask his neighbour if we could go camping on his land. Karl was a very friendly, middle-aged man, who immediately invited us over for a cup of tea in his lovely cottage farm. Inside the cute house he told us stories about his interesting life and sweet grandchildren and we felt more welcome than ever.

Karl went away to his other house, but he invited us to go camping on his land that evening. We gladly accepted the kind offer and we rushed to set up our tent, in the fortunately, less heavy rain. Karl also left us a pile of logs to light up a fire in a cute, picturesque place near the cottage. It was the perfect evening! We listened to the rain falling down on the roof, while we were sitting near the warm fireplace. We were looking at the majestic flames and listened to soothing music. We had some deep conversations and ended the evening with looking at the bright stars. Out here in the mountains, with so little light pollution, we could see them very well. We even spotted a few falling stars. Could this evening be more perfect?

The next day it was finally time to go and see the Gelmersee! The hike up there was fairly challenging and we were glad that we didn't try to do this the evening before in the pouring rain with heavy gear. After approximately an hour we reached the mountain top and we had an amazing view over the gorgeous lake. We took in the beautiful view and we were very thankful that we did the difficult hike, instead of easily taking a cablecar. It felt so much more like a reward now! And it was this moment that I realised that lakes do really have the gorgeous colours that were promised on the photographs. Sometimes, just sometimes, heaven really is a place on earth!