After a miserable night in Tauranga we drove back a bit further south to our next stop which was Waitomo. In Maori it actually means water-hole, and it famous for it's glowworm caves, which we wanted to see. The wet weather seemed to improve the nearer we got but the drive took a bit longer than we had planned after an unexpected detour in Hamilton. By detour I mean we got very lost. Nevertheless we made it there in the end, and ended up staying for the night in a small village about 15km outside of Waitomo itself. Unfortunatley as I'm writing this I can't actually remember what it was called, but it was a nice place. The rain had stopped and the sun came out, so after leaving our van at a site we walked into town to grab some cakes and have a wander. The campsite was one of the nicer ones we had stayed in too, and they had a good TV room so Justin even managed to watch the rugby that night.

We got up and left fairly early the next day to drive a bit further down to the caves. This only took a few minutes and it was a lovely day, but when we got there we were disapointed as the glowworm cave we had wanted to see was shut because the water levels were too high. Luckily there was still one cave open, the Rukauni cave, and it actually worked out better for us as it was a better tour. It was a bit more expensive but much longer and we still got to see loads of glowworms. However after the guide told us they are actually big glowing maggots, I wasn't quite so excited by them. The cave was huge and had a really cool man made spiral entrance that they had to build as the original one was sacred. We saw lots of stalagtites and stalagmites, a river running through and things like fossils that had been found in it. It was a really good couple of hours and the time flew. The bit I liked the best is when we had to walk through a part with no lights as it was competely dark and a bit scary!

Once we had finished in the cave we drove off straight away as we had followed their van in, and set off on our last big drive in the van to Auckland. I couldn't believe our time in New Zealand was nearly over and we were both a bit upset about giving back to van the next day!