Well after leaving our tour guides of the Big O and lisa we were back on our own and after a bus ride back to Auckland picked up our rock van...."Rolling Stoned" (check pics!) Jagger would love it! With enough space to fit all our bags in we werent having to strap my pants to the roof anymore as before in the car! As we were on our own the agenda was...waves waves waves! The charts looked ok for Raglan so we weaved our way through the green hills to the legendary spot. We hung for a couple of days, the surf wasnt great, small and a little choppy but we still made our selves go in at Indicators, the furthest point of the 3, with a shoulder high wave offering a bit of fun. Was good fun to get wet but with a big swell and offshores forecast for the weekend hopes were high for good stuff to come! Until that swell did come we decided to go and do something else.....caving and blackwater rafting! We went to waitomo were there is a network of underground caves. We had an awesome trip, suited up in proper Sly Stallone Cliff hanger gear we squeezed our way down a tight crack in the hills into the underground! Once under it was amazing, we squeezed through a few tight cracks and scrambeled through streams and rocks, swimming through freezing water pools and then cruising down the rivers in the dark on our rubber rings, with all lights off looking at the ceiling covered in spectacular glow worms. We also walked through some tunnels with lights off being guided by the glow worms which were amazing. 2 and a half hours later we emerge into day light feeling pretty happy with ourselves. Truly like some scenes out of movies - cliff hanger and Indiana Jones for the obvious reasons and Aliens, when looking at all the fantastic Stalagmites and Stalagtites which littered the caves, truly spectacular, and if tapped they played a note of music; each different depending on its size!

So after our underground adventure we return to Raglan to find it still not quite there, but during saturday the winds go offshore and a solid 1 and a half over head waves were pumping through. We chose Manu out of the 3 points as it seemed to be the best, but we were both a bit dissapointed, we clocked up plenty of water time over the next couple of days but the wave was pretty fat really and add to that the 50 other monkeys trying to surf there and it was far from ideal. Pretty happy that we saw it working though and i got some good waves but reckon that NZ has plenty of uncrowded and hollow potential! So we make a new plan with the conditions changing we decide to head to the east coast. Not before though a little stop in Rotorua (where we are now) to go White Water Rafting tomorrow on a grade 5 river and Zorbing today. Zorbing consists of standing in a massive infaltable ball partly filled with water and being pushed down a hill! Sounds bizzare? Well it was but was awesome fun and becky screamed like a girl!! Or at least i thought she did, i couldnt really hear over all my giggling!!