We woke up early to a bright clear day, pigeons sitting on the telephone line and a dog having a face off with a cat. Sadly the cat outwitted the dog at every move much to my disappointment.

We had decided to wake up early and make the long drive down to the Waitomo caves, which included a cave full of glow worms. As we arrived in the car park hunger struck so for the first time we had decided to take out our own mini kitchen and cook noodles alongside the van, it was difficult and took quite a while but very tasty and cost-effective :)

We first did a tour of the Ruakuri Cave, which was as you can see in the picture decorated with beautiful intricate stalactites and stalagmites of all different colours and shapes some having formed columns and some just tiny cm wide having just formed recently, which was in the past 300 years! Our guide was great however there were some interesting canadians who had to ask all the silly annoying question, and somehow had the confidence to ask me and josh when we were getting married!!!! Strange amd alot of shock!

We then went into the actual glow worm caves, where we were taken on a tour of more formations which were stunning but we had seen it all in the last one, we just wanted to see the glow worms. So we were taken onto a boat which went around a river in the caves where it was pitch black a bit scary getting onto a boat not knowing where the water is etc. But our guide steered the boat around with wires above the boat and we went into the darkest parts of the cave too look above us and hundreds of tiny glowing green worms, it was stunning until josh told me i should probably close me mouth as they were living creatures, im sure you can put it together. We learnt about how the worms hang from the ceiling in little hammocks they makes and they then reel down little fishing lines for insects to get trapped in and they cant go anywhere because there is poison on the lines, very clever little guys.

As is now regular our petrol had been used up pretty quickly so we had to go quite a way out to get some petrol and found an extremely quiet campsite, with us and an older couple, the site resembled something of a persons front garden, i almost felt as though we were using their kitchen and their toilets, however they lived in a van too so that made it feel a bit better. :/