Christmas Day dawned overcast and drizzly - the weather forecast said it should brighten with the chances of showers disappearing by 2pm ish so we decided to walk the Diamond Lake and Rocky Summit track after lunch.
I went off to the gym while John watched the film Mama Mia, rather than the religious service, on television!
After lunch we headed the half an hour up the road towards Mount Aspiring National Park and parked at the head of the Diamond Lake trail. Albeit there was rain in the air, and on the windscreen, we trusted the forecast - and we were right to as it stayed dry for the duration of the walk. At the base of the trail it gave all the options we decided we would do the 7km to Rocky Summit - estimated to be a 3 hour round trip. it was uphill from the outset albeit there were well constructed steps and paths to the lake look out point ( view from here is today's photo). We then continued up to Rocky Summit taking the western track deciding we would come back via the eastern track. It was steep, narrow and rocky in places as it twisted and turned to the summit and great views out over Lake Wanaka and the mountains behind us. Although we were perspiring heavily when we finally made it to the top we had to put our jumpers around us as it was quite cool on top. We sat awhile with other walkers taking in the view and eating our trail mix and drinking water. We then set off back down the eastern track - slightly easier and less rocky but still very narrow with steep drops in places. It took 90mins to get up but less than half of that to get down. We were back in the car park and assessed that the walk had taken us @ 2 hours. Having exerted ourselves on this medium to hard graded walk we decided that we deserved a coffee and churros at Patagonia's - today we tried the chocolate dip - but have decided our favourite is the caramel one - you have to test both to find out!
Back at the apartment John cooked our vegetarian Xmas dinner which was scrummy - particularly as he had found yorkshire puddings and roast potatoes at New World.
Xmas evening TV consisted of a Miranda Xmas special and the Royal Variety Performance - we'd seen both before leaving the UK but they bore being repeated as there were bits we'd missed. We did however get to see the Queens speech well before the UK - it was shown at 7pm here which would have been 6am in England - an unlikely time for everyone at home to be watching it!!!