New Zealand got off to a cracking start. We landed at 4am in Auckland and managed to leave the airport at 4pm. That's some effort right?! Keeping up with our garbage organisation of the trip, we hadn't even spared a moment's thought into how when or what we would do once in NZ. Cue THE LONELY PLANET ROUG GUIDE and football manage. Eventually we tired of the game and decided to make some enquiries about campervans. Well actually the 2 helpful girls behind the desk did all the donkey work and i returned to the game. It didn't help our cause landing on Easter weekend, but we kept faith and sure enough after a few hours they'd found us a campervan company.

First impressions of the little van weren't great - can't say they improved much from there on in. Imagine a mini cooper, the old ones. Well it was similar in size but in the back it had a fold out bed, sink, cupboards, a duvet, pillows, towels, sheets, Gordon Ramsey's full set of kitchen utensils and a little 2 burner camping stove. Not to mention our luggage. Cosy or what!? Spooning was out of the question.

So any way, we thought we should head north and try and reach the Bay of Islands in the next day or two - don't ask me why, I still don't really know what's up there of interest. To be honest the highlight of the first couple of days was our Caving experience. The LP (lonely planet) had recommended the Abbey Caves. All it said was prepared to get wet in search of the glow worms. Well to be fair, you prepare to get wet going to the beach or riding a log flume, neither of which really fazed me. So with flip flop and shorts and Toms newly purchased LED head torch, we set off into the wilderness looking for these caves. This torch by the way was probably as bright as the backlight on your mobile. To be honest, I really was expecting a manned station with rope hire or waterproofs etc. No such luck.

We peered into the first little opening. It looked like quite a climb to get down there, and we couldn't really make out what was at the bottom. Brave Tom went first, he had trainers on. I'm not kidding, it was an effort. Lowering yourself off rocks; squeezing between gaps that the guts just couldn't handle and occasionally leaping from rock to rock just praying that you judged the distances properly. I heard Tom shout "...Bit of water down here mate." Oh good - I left my arm bands back in the van. By this point I'd left the flip flops on a rock further up and was now bare foot. We both splashed our toes about a little bit arguing over who was going in first. I couldn't - I didn't want to extinguish my torch (cigarette) Sure enough we both ambled in and it was clear the water wasn't going to stop at our knees. Thinking better of it, we heading in search of the other caves...

On the way I was telling tom all about NZ's ferocious cave bears. I think he actually bought it at first but maybe i played on it too much when I kept hanging back in the shadows, growling. This next cave was lake free at the bottom but the climb down was a little more demanding. It seemed to go on forever. Again bare footed I followed tom and his head candle further into the dark, with this cave becoming smaller and smaller, to the point of crouching down to fit through into the next section. It was spookily quiet. And when we turned off the torch and I put out my 4th cigarette, it was PITCH black. We joked about being stuck down there, flash floods and all that lark - in the meantime both knowing it wasn't exactly the safest of adventures we'd undertaken. Sure enough though, we'd found the glow worms scattered about on the walls and roof of the cave. I'd love to tell you all that I was left speechless and in ore...when in truth I was probably muttering and swearing in sheer disbelief that id risked life and limb to see what looked like the little LED's that made up Toms torch.

I'm happy to say though, the New Zealand journey picked up steam from here on in. We were just breaking ourselves in slowly...