Merry Christmas to all in the Northern hemisphere.

 December 25th

And despite my pessimism, the card was correct, it was a very warm and sunny Christmas day.

Breakfast of bacon and eggs followed by a very lazy morning. High tide wasn't until noon and our initial plan was to head off to that small beach nearby, but truth be told we couldn't be bothered, it was too nice just to sit in the sun and chill. We also followed the Dutch tradition of eating our chocolate letters.

Of course, I still wanted my Christmas day swim, and with slack water at the high tide I was determined to find a way across all those dead trees to get to the beach. I managed it, pushed a load of debris out of the way and made my way in. 

 

I had hoped to push that tree into deeper water. Failed miserably.

 

Christmas lunch consisted of salmon moose made to my mums recipe, and salad.

It was great fun watching the fishermen with their fly rods, not one managed to catch anything, well that's not strictly true. One fisherman got his line snagged on something, and it was most amusing watching him trying to dislodge the lure.

That sun was hot, suntan cream liberally applied but even so I think Iv'e burnt my shoulders. Maybe from when I went in the sea. And Ian has ever such a shiny red nose 😎 We even had a sun halo. Hmm does that mean bad weather is coming?

Had a yummy Christmas dinner consisting of a huge sirloin steak cut into two, mushrooms, tomato, fried potato with garlic and onion and garden peas. Several glasses of wine with dinner was followed by fruit salad and cream. A lovely end to a super, chilled out day.

We leave this site tomorrow, plan to find the most Northerly lighthouse. We did all four corners on the North Island, so now it's the turn on the South.

And wildlife today