Tuesday dawned bright and clear, everybody was up early for our dawn (or there abouts) swim to mark the start of the Winter Solstice Pagan Festival, an official Raoul Island public holiday. Much planning had gone into the day and there was a tight schedule! After our wake up swim we set off for the hot springs and spent a good while soaking in the tubs, we had brought the thermometer down to see who could stand the hottest water, and all set off back to the hostel looking a little pink! On our way back we decided to check out an alleged sighting of a ripe orange tree (if you pick them too early then they aren't very sweet, but leave it too long and the birds will devour them), and these were perfect! We sent Ash up the tree and gave it a good shaking and down they came - shouldn't have left my hard hat at home! After filling the back of the mule we set off to set up the juicing factory.
A good few hours and some 70l (now frozen for when we run out of oranges) of juice later it was time for the pagan feast! Obviously prawn cocktail, roast pork and lemon meringue pie! All washed down with fresh OJ and a sneaky vodka! We had an hour for digestion in which we were all pretty much comatose before the pagan games began! In teams of two we had about seven events to compete in - egg and spoon, tug of war and a blind folded obstacle course!
Competition was fierce and much blood, sweat and tears were lost (well that could have been from all the laughing), the Greek Gods came out on top (we had dressing up themes for each team) and won the much sought after prize - a siamese lemon from our lemon tree. All our competitions seem to involve home grown prizes...
The day finished with our weekly Tuesday night quiz, pagan themed of course!
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