Our Great Adventure: Roys Peak Day 172 9/03/2015

The plan for today was to walk up Roys Peak which is just behind the campsite. The weather looked good when we woke so we packed up, had a quick detour in to town for some provisions and then headed to the car park which is a short drive down the road to the Mount Aspiring National Park. It was just after 10am by the time we set off. It's a grassy track for most of the way up, no scree or boulders (yippee!) and the views are lovely looking out over Lake Wanaka, its peninsulas and islands, and the peaks of the National Park. It was good to be able to admire the views without having to constantly look at where you were putting your feet. On the route up we watched a helicopter land on the far edge of the ridge, dropping off a paraglider who then took off out over the lake. The peak is 1578m high with an ascent of over 1200m so it certainly wasn't a 'walk in the park'. We reached the summit and walked a little bit further along the ridge to find a spot for lunch where we enjoyed the pizza that Emily had packed up for us yesterday. From the ridge you get views over to the south towards Cardrona and beyond where we had driven through a few days before. The return is by the same route and we were back at the van just before 3pm, stopping off on the way down to enjoy the nashi pears we'd bought after sampling them with the Heaths (they're a cross between a pear and an apple and are delicious). We continued up the road towards the National Park and the ski area looking for a crag we'd read about. We reached the gravel road and still hadn't seen it so decided to head back to the campsite. Our insurance doesn't cover us to rock climb so we wouldn't be able to get out on the rock even if we had found it! Back at the campsite we had an early dinner and then drove into Wanaka and headed to Cinema Paradiso where we'd booked tickets to see the Hobbit, Battle of Five Armies, (Diane had promised Simon that we'd go to watch it in New Zealand and this seemed a good place to do it). We were quite early as we wanted to get good seats but it wasn't busy so we had the pick of the cinema. The film was OK, more CGI than story, but the ice creams with home made cookie bits in the intermission were delicious!