At Gava Beach, northeast coast of Barcelona, Spain.

 

At the Alpine Coaster in Andorra.

 

At Blindekuh (our dinner in the dark) in Zurich, Switzerland.

 

Our chocolate flower on the balcony looking over Lake Geneva in Switzerland.

 

A hālāwai hou mākou. Ke aloha Competitouristas!

Until we meet again! Cheers Competitouristas!

John, Maribeth & Kelsey

 

So on the final day of Competitours, Day 11, we went to one of the first Swiss chocolate chalets, Cailler. We had basically a whole day event at their production facility. First we went in to a large glass enclosed “kitchen” where all of the people taking tours could look inside and watch us. Once inside we were introduced to Geraldine (a Swiss Chocolate Master) who had us get dressed up for our chocolate making challenge. We donned aprons and chef hats and then got assigned to one of 12 stations.

From there we got a demonstration on how to make this!!!!

We did it in two parts. First we had to make the leaves which involved colored, melted cocoa butter which we painted on a piece of plastic. Then, after the “paint” dried, we gently spread melted white chocolate over the painted areas. When the chocolate dries and we peel them off of the plastic the “paint” will come off with them. To make the leaves curl we placed the plastic sheets in a curved mold so when they dried, they dried curled! So cool. We used a similar process with darkchocolate to make the green and brown leaves and twigs. Lastly to make the contoured base we put ice nuggets in a shallow box leaving a open area in the middle to create a flat base. We then poured dark chocolate over the ice. The chocolate immediately cooled. Later the ice would melt leaving a contoured mold for our base! So cool!

Once this was done the chocolate pieces were all placed in the refrigerator to harden. That was it for the first part of our big challenge for the day. Next, after a short snack break we had the opportunity to go through their chocolate museum where we learned all about Cailler, it’s history, it’s founders, how they make their main production chocolates. The second challenge was a 10 question quiz that the chocolatiers gave us which they graded. It was not easy!

Next came the third challenge which was really fun. They prepared a tray with multiple ingredients for a taste test challenge. There were four colored liquids, each had one of the four basic tastes that we had to identify – bitter, salty, sweet and sour. Next there was a cup with sugar in it. However, this sugar was flavored and we had to guess what flavor it was. We guessed nutmeg, and we were CORRECT! Finally the last two cups had pieces of chocolate and we had to taste them and decide what we felt was percentage of cacao in those pieces of chocolate. We guessed 70% for the first one (it was actually 64%) then 40% for the second (and it was 46%), so we got pretty darn close!

Once those two challenges were completed we had to finish our chocolate flower. We took all of the previously made pieces out of the refrigerator and peeled them off their pastic molds. The paint came off perfectly. Reall neat. Next we had to fix them into position on the middle white chocolate piece of the flower, using melted chocolate and a cooling spray to instantly harden the chocolate once we had the piece in proper position. Once both rows of petals were completed, like we were shown by Geraldine, we could ad lib placement of the different leaves, twigs and other accessories like the chocolate hearts we were supplied with. (There just wasnt enough time to make every single piece). We also placed gold edible luster dust on to areas to give the golden shine.

Once the flower was completed we had to clean our work station and put the flower on a chocolate base and in a presentation box and set it out for judging. The judges were the chocolatiers themselves. Here is the sample again and the one below is what we made!

 

We thought ours turned out pretty well and the judges did too. We were in the top 5 and got major points on this last ONLY risk/reward point challenge which was also bumped up on positive and negative points to make this the most point earning (or losing) single challenge of the competition. We were so proud of how we did! We all got certificates for our chocolate making skills, and also got to keep our aprons and chef hats as well. Sweet, literally!!!

After this we got on the bus for a ride to our final night hotel which is on the shores of Lake Geneva. Amazing views from our bedrooms of the lake and the surrounding mountains. Unbelievably beautiful. We all got settled in our rooms and then went down to the deck off of the dining room and hung out having drinks and playing a game of mafia. I had never played that before and it was very interesting. Ask any teenager, they’ll probably be able to tell you how it’s played, because I’m still trying to understand it. 😆 Then it was on to the final dinner, end of competition video show (which was put together by a very bright young man who was part of a team from Philadelphia), then the awarding of the wimning prizes.

As one last suprise, Steve had arranged for the other teams to video a Happy Birthday wish for me and that was made into a video as well which was shown right before the end of tour video. I was quite touched by the video. This was a vacation that I will never forget!! THE STEVE, despite all of his craziness (or maybe because of it) was the ultimate host for this amazing trip. He made it an absolutely wonderful exerience.

So, now you might ask, “how did you do in the competition”? Well, let me tell you. We did just about as well as you can do without being in the money. We came in 4th place, but ony missed the money by 30 points!!! To put that into persective. We were lingering in 3rd and 4th place from the beginning until about day 7 when we crashed and burned and literally fell into last place (again there were 12 teams). Then over the last 4 days we clawed our way back up and ended up with 610 points (only 30 behind 3rd place). >600 points and only missed the top 3 by a mere 30 points! Oh well! Quite an amazing comeback from the absolute cellar just 4 days prior. But the more important prize than the cash was the amazing friends we made in the 11 days of the trip. To have only met all of this unbelievably talented group 11 days ago is crazy. Everyone feels like family now. Breaking away at the end of the night didn’t feel like leaving aquaintences from the last 11 days. It felt like saying “good bye for now,” to family you have known for years. What an incredible transformation over a short 11 days. An 11 days I will never forget!!!

Peace out to all of the Competitouristas!!!!

So for day 10 we started out by taking a boat to the base of Mount Pilatus in Lucerne, Switzerland.  Our next challenge for the day would be  near the top of the mountain. It is the highest ropes course in the world. 😳

First we had to get up to the peak, then we would have lunch. To get up there was an adventure and of it’s self. We had to take a cog train.  This is the steepest cog train track in the world. It is difficult to describe because we were going at such a steep angle, It’s felt as if at any moment this could topple backwards. What was more amazing was that on the steep slopes we would encounter small groups of cows. We didn’t realize they were there until we were just a upon them and you heard their cowbells as they were eating grass on the slopes.  The trip took about 15 minutes to get up to the top and the views were absolutely amazing.

So once at the top we all had lunch and then met at a certain time at a level down from the peak where the ropes course was located. At that point we all did an introductory beginner level ropes course and then it was challenge time. Each person had to pick a level of ropes course that they wanted to do and then tell Steve the time which they thought they could complete that course. After they completed the course they will then check back in with Steve and he would record the actual time that it took them to  complete their course. It turns out we did really well. Maribeth and I were both only five seconds off of our estimated time and Kelsey was only off by a minute. We were definitely in the top three of all the groups with our average guess differential.

After that we all got to do  whatever of the ropes courses that we wanted to.  Maribeth and I were pretty much done however Kelsey we learned is somewhat of a ropes course expert. She did at least three harder courses including their most difficult course which was called the Dragon Fire. She actually flew through the course with hardly any problem at all. She even got a standing ovation from THE STEVE for her agility on the course. Look Ma – no hands!!

Once we completed the ropes courses including watching the challenge by Steve and one of his partners (for which Steve won dinner due to crushing his competition!),  we headed back to our hotel to get cleaned up and head out to dinner.

We went to dinner at the old Swiss house and had an amazing house specialty of a tableside cooked Wienerschnitzel. First of all I dont want my primary care physician to see this due to the pound of butter in which it was cooked, but it was absolutely wonderful. (I think i feel my arteries closing just looking the the picture again!)

After dinner we had a nice walk back to the hotel where we saw the lion of Lucerne which is a carving in the side of the mountain as well as a walk-through a really cool covered bridge over the river that runs through the city.

Finally it was back to the hotel to crash for the evening  before tomorrow and our last day on Competitours.

So for Day 9 we first took a 3 hour bus ride from Andorra back to Barcelona to the airport for a flight to our next destination – Zurich, Switzerland!! We arrived in the afternoon and had great views of the Alps on flying in. Amazing!!

After we got checked into the hotel we grabbed an Uber to the restaurant Blindekuh – for Dinner in the Dark.  This restaurant actually employees as their waiters blind or partially sighted people. It was the first of such restaurants in Europe and has been around for 20 years.  To make the challenge even harder, not that a completely pitch black room doesn’t make it difficult to begin with,  we all had to wear white shirts. You got points deducted if you had any spots on your shirt that were larger than the size of a euro coin.

So the first appetizer was a Buratta (soft cheese like mozzarella)  with a melon and pinenuts and some other ingredients which we missed 😆.

Next course was a soup. Not easy to do in complete darkness!  He only ingredients out of the 10 that were in it that we thought were onions, radishes and chili.  Very tricky.

Main course had a pasta type face which was actually a rice based,  The main components was a figure of some sort. It was very difficult to identify the inside building however. Many people thought it was a fish or some mushroom however the main component was actually a smoked tofu with some mushrooms mixed in. The tofu we did not get. There were also sun dried tomatoes which we did get!

Finally, for dessert there was with a whipped cream and appricots with something that tasted  like granola at the base.

So despite the fact that we missed a number of ingredients on each individual dish apparently we did very well. Steve grouped the parts of the meal for the points breakdown.  He group appetizer and dessert together with one being savory and the other being sweet. There is a definite difference of people who can identify savory versus sweet and sometimes it’s difficult for people to do both. Fortunately for us apparently we have sensitive palette’s because Steve said with all of the food tasting challenges we swept them all (we are the first team, since he has been doing the dinner in the dark challenges, to win points in ALL of the dinner challenges) meaning were in the top five of each one, thus receiving good points!

We also had to identify an object in the room which was the cheer we were sitting on. We had to draw a picture of what we thought the chair looked like when we got out of the dark room. That was still slightly difficult because we did not know the object he wanted us to draw until after we came out.

Lastly in relation to our white shirts., Kelsey, Maribeth and I all had zero point loss because our shirts were perfectly clean at the end. Amazing!!  It probably helped that I pulled an Erkel (Google it anyone under 30 who reads this 😂) and pulled my pants up to about my chest minimizing exposed surface area of the shirt! 😜  Fully within the rules of the game. With Steve, you need to know how to play to the letter without cheating!! By the way here is an exclusive photo of the three teams at our dinner table!

😆😆😆

After dinner it was a trip back to the hotel and pack up for our next trip tomorrow which was a boat ride to the city of Lucerne, Switzerland.

Today we had three challenges set up in the small Nation of Andorra. If you’ve never heard of that country which I hadn’t until we were told we were going there, you should look it up it’s a very interesting place. So our first challenge was scheduled to be and Alpine slide. It just so happens that this Alpine slide it is also the largest one in the world. It’s 400 m elevation from the starting base and the course runs for over 5 km. We were scheduled to have the entire course all to ourselves. However, when we got to the park the company stated that the Alpine slide was close for the day. When we saw this on their website we thought it was closed for us. Unfortunately the company thought we were coming tomorrow. Good for us Steve had plenty of email trail showing that we reserved this for today. The only problem with that was that they still didn’t have any workers there to run the ride even though they agreed that we had reserved for today. So Steve our fearless leader, after multiple phone calls, actually spoke to one of the owners of the park to try to work things out. In the meantime knowing that nothing was going to happen right away they moved us to our second challenge that was a paintball game down at the bottom of the mountain. Therefore we all packed back into the bus and headed down the mountain to the Paintbal game. The paintball game was interesting. Our team had mostly people who have never done it before and we did not have very good strategy against the other teams and only captured the flag a couple times in all of our attempts. But what we did capture was a lot of welts from being pelted by paintballs. Dang those can sting (see photo below). Needless to say, we didn’t do very good with our points on that challenge.

After the pain of the paintball challenge was completed we moved on to mini formula 1 racing challenge. These were souped up go carts and they moved really fast. We had two sets of races for each competitor. We all did pretty well on that challenge and I think got some points to make up for lackluster showing at paintball. 😜 Kelsey did really well for not even being able to drive yet.

Once we completed our races, they finally had everything arranged for the Alpine Slide challenges. We had to go all the way back to the top of the mountain where the Alpine slide was but it was truly worth it. We had the entire course to ourselves. Heck, we had the entire park to ourselves because the park closed an hour before we got there. Now, I’m not a big fan of roller coasters so wasn’t sure exactly what to expect. We got strapped into our Alpine slide vehicle and a series of cables hold us up sometimes a very sharp angles towards the top of this portion of the mountain. It was a vertical elevation of 400 m from the bottom of the course. Once we got up to the top there was a short wait while the person in front of us went and then we were let go. On these Alpine racers there is two speeds, full speed forward or use the break. I actually really enjoyed the trip and didn’t have any significant issues like with roller coasters. It was an absolute blast. After our first challenge run with and got to go up for just a fun run down again. That was an amazing afternoon.

Once we have completed our second run we got back on the bus and headed back to the hotel. We went out to dinner and then head back to the hotel to finish up another challenge where we had to make a video about our run on the Via Ferrata yesterday. That was pretty fun as well. Tomorrow we travel back to Barcelona via bus then get on a plane to Zurich, Switzerland!!

Today was a relaxing morning leading up to a crazy afternoon challenge.  The challenge involved going on a Via Ferrata course. This was the only course of this type in Europe that runs entirely along the coastline so parts of the course are actually over the Mediterranean Sea. The courses are a combination of rock climbing and a ropes course. There was a lot of core and upper body workout on this one.

As someone who is not super excited about heights, I went as far as I could go and that was about halfway. It was actually a lot farther than I thought I would get. (I was out after I had a slip at a hold up point. No real fall and no injuries, but that was it for me at that point.) It was really cool climbing along the rocks over the sea. Maribeth and Kelsey however Crushed it and did the whole course.

We couldnt take cameras on the course except for the GoPro, and what the guides took (but we dont have them yet) so we will get some videos and still shots updated on this post at a later date.

Now for a 3 hour bus ride to one of the smallest countries in all of Europe, Andorra!