About 15 minutes after waking up to a nice sunny Christmas morning we got absolutely dumped on by rain. Luckily we had the shelter to keep us and our things dry for the most part. We had a great Christmas breakfast of Watties (not Heinz) baked beans and scrambled eggs. We eventually set out in light rain and got moving on a planned short day. The hike was largely through a mix of forest and recently logged land, there was also an electric fence that we had to scramble under. That’s Heather scrambling (not falling) in the picture above. We arrived in the small town of Ngunguru where we could smell everybody grilling out and having BBQS. Apparently Kiwis treat Christmas somewhat like July 4th is celebrated as it’s in the middle of the Summer for them and just grill out with family and friends. Walking through Ngunguru we got to a boat ramp at the end where we texted James, tonight’s campground host who came and fetched us on his boat and ferried us across to his campsite, which the trail conveniently runs straight through.  At camp we found that our American friends had stayed here an extra night and a large group of professional water skiers was spending the week here so we did some celebrating with them. The campground was super nice and we spent a lot of the afternoon laying around warming in the sun.