A chilly start to the day and a lack of overseas tourists meant a huge drop in the number of Christmas morning swimmers in Lake Wanaka this year.
In pre-Covid-19 times, picnickers would have claimed their car park and patch of lakefront turf by midmorning, but this year the few who turned up were spoilt for choice.
Consuela Sermini (29), of Chile, and Yann Serim (30), of Turkey, were two of the handful of swimmers who braved the freezing water temperature for a swim.
Mr Serim said both he and Ms Sermini had arrived in New Zealand before the lockdown and met while working at a kiwifruit packhouse in Te Puke in March.
"She was a packer, I was a stacker," he said.
Despite having to keep the 2m social distancing rule they "managed to create a relationship through that" and had been travelling together ever since.
Although Wanaka had been on their list of places to visit, they had not planned to have Christmas Day there; they had just been following the good weather.
After the swim and a barbecue Christmas lunch in Eely Point Reserve they would spend the afternoon and early evening phoning their friends and family scattered around the world, Mr Serim said.
They both had jobs picking cherries in Cromwell starting early next week and would visit Queenstown in the meantime, he said.
