I decided to skip the cyclist shoot in the morning because I didn’t realy want to get caught up by 200 cysclists on the road … So I ended up leaving before 8 – with the aim of getting to the Waitomo Caves and possibly staying there overnight.

Had a nice but uneventfull drive to Waitomo (lots of winding roads) and arrived in time to book into a 10:30 Glowworm cave tour.  Not alowed to take photos in this cave at all I am afriad… but was amazing to see some many glow worms… The tour took longer than planned, and I rushed down to my next tour – the Aranui Cave – but arrived 5 minutes too late….

I really wanted a chance to get some cave shots (you can take photos in this cave)… so decided to hang around until the next tour (1:00 PM).  I had enough time to duck out to the next town, get some fuel, buy some fruit and get a lotto l=tivket ($23M on Saturday), before heading back in time for the 1PM tour.  Took Lots of shots here – some actually turned out 🙂

I then headed (via back roads) north planning to et as far as I could – so tomorrow’s drive (for the wedding) will be short so I can arrive mid morningish.  I found some VERY windy, very isolated back roads – including about 40km of gravel, which ws fun…but very slippery and a bit scary too.  If you needed to brake, the gravel was so loose that you would slide.  At one stage a car was speeding towards me… slammed on his brakes… spun across in FRONT of me… but managed somehow to correct just in time and then spun out again as I passed him… Idiot …

Eventually got to a seaside town (on the NZ west coast) called Raglan which is very nice and checked ito a Holiday Park about 5:30PM.  I settled in and then headed to the beach around 7:30for some sunset hots (even though t was veru overcats and threatening to rain I had my fingers crossed).  It did start to rain, but I think the timelapse (900 photos exactly = 30 seconds) which was of an island and some hills that the sun was setting on, will be interesting and moody I think.  I also managed to get some decent Sunset photos, and started catting to a couple of gorgeous Melbourne based Swedish girls who were 10 days into a 3 week driving tour of NZ – and were living out of their car :).