Jet Boating in Interlaken

Being only 45 minutes by train from the Swiss border, I seem to find myself in Switzerland a few times a year. And now that my good friend Gigi lives in Lauterbrunnen, a little over three hours from Freiburg, I have an even better excuse to go down there. So a few weeks ago, I packed a bag and spent a couple nights in the Alps. I’m not really much of an outdoorsy person, but the Bernese Oberland region, where Gigi lives, is just gorgeous.

The bigger and better-known town of Interlaken is only about 20 minutes away by train, so we went there for a few hours one day. The main reason we went was to try out Jetboat Interlaken. I was a little hesitant at first because the jet boats I’ve seen advertised in New Zealand looked a bit too fast and crazy for me, but I decided I need to do more things that might not be so comfortable.

Interlaken is located in between Lake Thun and Lake Brienz. Jetboat Interlaken took us out on Lake Brienz (technically in the town of Bönigen, but close enough to Interlaken you might not even notice) at about 10:30am, and there was almost no one else on the water. The boat captain drove around for a bit at a slow enough speed that we could take some pictures. I decided to leave my DSLR in a locker and just used my phone because I didn’t want to end up getting my camera wet, but he did warn us when he was about to speed up so we could put our cameras away.

When that warning came, we knew he’d be speeding up and doing some spins. Luckily it wasn’t as fast or crazy as the videos I’ve seen from New Zealand. We did get splashed a little, though we were provided with jackets to help keep us dry, so mostly it was my face and hair that got wet. The spins were actually a lot of fun.

But for some reason, I couldn’t quite stay in my seat when he spun the boat clockwise. I was sitting on the left side of the boat with an empty seat between me and Gigi, who was on the right. So when he spun clockwise, my body veered off towards the right. Despite holding onto the bar in front of me and trying to anchor my feet under the bar at the floor, I kept sliding across the empty seat and running into Gigi. (Please note, she did not slide into me when he spun counter clockwise.) Everyone found this rather entertaining. And luckily for you, there was a GoPro on the boat, so every time he told us to put our cameras away because he was about to spin, he set the camera to take pictures of all of us.

Just to be clear, it’s not like there was any chance of my flying out of the boat or anything like that. But this happened every single time, and it got funnier each time. As you can see in the picture above, the boat captain started expecting it and laughed right along with everyone else. I kind of feel bad for the family sitting behind us because I’m almost completely blocking them in the photo.

Overall, I had a really great experience on Lake Brienz near Interlaken. The lake was gorgeous, and the boat captain told us the water is actually so clean, there isn’t enough algae for the fish to live on. The lakeside villages were just as cute as I expected from Alpine Switzerland. And I love waterfalls, so I enjoyed seeing Giessbach Falls. The faster speeds and the spins in the boat were enough to be fun but not so extreme to worry about losing my breakfast. I also really appreciated that JetBoat Interlaken provided us with about 20 photos from our trip.

Big thanks to JetBoat Interlaken for providing me with a complimentary jet boat experience. The two photos of the boat and passengers were provided by JetBoat Interlaken. As always, all opinions are my own.