Even mountaineers need a day to rest 🧗

We awoke to a beautiful morning in the mountains. Nothing planned for today apart from an evening trip to the Mount John Observatory, but as this excursion which begins at 22:00 (obviously when it's dark for stargazing) we cancelled as it needed a 3 hour drive round trip back down the valley and up the other side, in the pitch dark ........ "No thank you, we thought!"
So we settled for a lazy day starting with Brunch rather than breakfast over at the Hermitage Hotel. This appears to be the spot where everyone on the mountain congregates as the queues for the cafe were non-stop and this is after the hotel has served breakfast. The hotel also houses a tribute museum to Sir Edward Hillary; a New Zealander, who used this area to practice for expeditions to Mount Everest and the Antarctic. As Jayne and I had none of these activities planned we felt no need to practice and just spent the day relaxing and admiring the views.
As I mentioned earlier, we cancelled our night excursion and as luck would have it as the night set in the winds grew stronger and pretty much kept us awake howling all during the night. Even in a hire car I would not have liked to have made that drive!!Read more