From Rotorua we made our way to the famous Waitomo caves. There are more than 300 caves in the area but there are 3 in particular which are popular with the tourists and these are the glow-worm cave, Aranui cave and Ruakuri cave.

The Waitomo town is tiny with just a small local shop and a pub and a few hostels and B+Bs., We stayed at the YHA in a dorm which was pretty new so was clean and tidy and we only had to share with one other person.

We booked on the Glow-worm cave and the Ruakuri cave and did the Ruakuri cave that afternoon. The cave is really spectacular and had an entrance that has just been built recently and cost millions of pounds due to the local Maori people protesting about the old site being on an ancient burial area.

The cave was 63 meters underground and is the coldest cave in the world as all caves are 14 degrees except this one! You can only enter the caves as part of a tour and there were about 20 people on our tour which was quite a lot really. The tour took about an hour and a half and we got to see some glow-worms and amazing stalagmites and stalagtites which just look like wax and are very tempting to touch but you're not allowed as they have found that by touching them, it can damage them and change their colour or cause them to drop off! There were some really annoying guys on the tour who were doing everyone's heads in as they all had good cameras but had also brought along tripods so were taking hundreds of pictures and setting up the tripods then dismantling them every few minutes and pushing to the front to try and get their pictures grrrr!

The next morning we were booked on the first glow-worm tour of the day at 9:00am and lucky for us there were only 5 of us on the tour and we had a great older guy as our tour guide. As there were only 5 of us we managed to get to see areas which most other bigger tour groups don't get to see which was good. After a tour around the cave we got into a boat in the underground river and went to a really dark part of the cave. We couldn't believe our eyes there were thousands of glow-worms lighting up the cave all around us it looked like the stars were above us!

We thought that the Glow-worm cave was really great and the tour guide was excellent, it probably made it better getting a smaller tour group too. After the glow-worm caves we decided that there wasn't much more to stay around the area for so made our way to the Corommandel Peninsular.

Our first stop was a place called Thames which was basically a stopover before going to Corommandel town and Whitianga Town.

Our Hostel in Thames was the oldest house in the whole of Thames and was really nice. We spent the day in Thames and had a stroll around the shops and sea front which was nice then the next day we left to visit Corommandel Town. The town was also very nice and quite similar to Thames with old Victorian style houses. We were going to try to do some red snapper fishing whilst in the town as it was a lovely day but none of the boats were doing any fishing trips so we ended up just going to a fish and chip shop and eating it instead with a kiwi favourite L&P drink! We also did a walk to a view point up a hillside which was a bit tiring but really nice! We decided in the end not to stay in this town and carry up to another town called Whitianga so that we could visit the hot water beach and cathedral cove.

Whitianga is a beachside town which is very nice. We stayed at a hostel right on the beach front and managed to get our own little chalet style room our own kitchen and dining area! The first day we were there we got a text message from Darren and Kirstie saying they had changed their minds about leaving New Zealand early and were on their way to the same town! When they got to our hostel the managers said they had a chalet with two double bedrooms which we could have so we all ended up sharing one of the chalets. On the second day there we had this great idea that we would hire some bikes out and cycle to Cathedral Cove and Hot Water Beach as it was a nice day. We got told it would take us about an hour to Cathedral cove then another half an hour from there to get to the beach. Two and a half hours later we were still on the bikes trying to get to Cathedral Cove - me and kirstie were not the happiest of girls at this point! It probably wouldn't have been too bad if it was a flat straight road but the fact that it was mainly uphill didn't help at all! Me and Kirstie ended up pushing our bikes up a lot of the time! When we finally got to Cathedral Cove it was another 30 minute walk to get to the actual beach! The beach itself was really lovely and we stayed there a few hours and had a nice picnic before deciding to miss the beach that day and just do the dreaded cycle back! Ady was first back but that was no surprise really as he is always first up the hill or mountain, then 20 minutes later I was back then Darren and Kirstie ended up back 20 minutes after me! We cycled about 36 kilometres in total that day and my muscles definitely felt it the next day!

The next day we decided to take the car to the hot water beach as I was definitely not biking it again! Hot Water Beach is one of them mad phenomena's that you get in New Zealand. Part of the beach is sat on a volcanic plate underground and if you get there 2 hours either side of the tide so that the water is far enough out and start digging out a round pool you can have your very own hot thermal pool! When we got on the beach there were already quite a few people on it in their hot pools that they had dug out! We started digging little holes all over the place but the water underground was either boiling hot or not hot enough! After about ten minutes a guy in one of the pools said we could have there's as they were going home so we ended up with the best pool out of everyone's and another couple who had been hanging around looked gutted that we had been given the best pool ha! The pool wasn't very deep but it was really hot, a bit too hot at times and it was great being in a hot pool when it was quite cold outside!

We spent another day at Whitianga and then headed off to Auckland to spend a night before doing the far north.