Day 9: Waipu Dark Magic

Today we said our goodbyes to Susan.  We have very much enjoyed and appreciated having these couple of days which have given us chance to catch up with Susan's side of the family as well as time to recover from travelling and prepare for our big adventure in the van.

So here we are, Day 1 of our motorhome adventure!
We negotiated busy Auckland without incident with the help of TomTom and we drove onwards into the rolling hills of the north east.  Stopping at a service station for lunch, the guy on the next table came to speak to us and he came from Thornbury in Bradford!  He had lived in New Zealand for 24 years.  This would be the first of many such encounters with folks along our journey and representative of the friendliness of the people.  He advised us to stop off for a top rate coffee at the Dome Valley Cafe, which we did, also climbing the trail to the Top of the Dome Lookout which had super impressive views back down to Auckland, forested hills and deep gorges and the ocean.

From the Dome Cafe, which did indeed serve excellent coffee, we headed towards our stop for the night and our first wild camp.  You can only camp on these sites if you are completely self-contained (motorhomes have a blue sticker on the back which demonstrates this).  The DOC (Department of Conservation) site was several miles down a gravel track which was why it was omelette for tea!  I opened a cupboard and the eggs fell out - a lesson for future storage and travelling!  So now, having eaten I am sitting outside the van waiting to see if the sunset over the hills in front of us will develop into something worthy of a photo.  Behind us the trees are full of cicadas.

There are just half a dozen folks here on site and all very friendly.  The folks next door have already given us several recommendations for wild sites further north, as they are heading southwards, and also several money off vouchers for tours, nice people!  So this will be our first night sleeping in the van and tomorrow we will drive to Whangerei (Wh is pronounced 'F' so it sounds a bit like Ferengi from Star Trek!) and then on to the Bay of Islands.

When it grew dark we went in search of the reason for choosing this campground.  Sandals and shorts were called for and, armed with the headtorch, we walked down a muddy bank in to Waipu Caves.  The descent was a bit tricky but once we reached the bottom of the mudbank we were in to the stream and we waded in the direction described by the other campers who had ventured in to the network earlier.  The water around our feet was pleasantly warm and we followed the course of the stream for several metres until no more light reached in to the cave.  Then we switched off the headtorch and, above us, thousands of pinpricks of light filled the roof crevices from glow worms.  Further in they were also reflected in the stream.

It is difficult to find the words for how magical it was.  Our light also illuminated giant stalactites which looked alien in the small beam. Then Tony spotted a small eel in the water around our feet as we retraced our steps up the stream and on to the sandbank - wow!  We ended the evening sitting outside Shona's van, chatting with her, her hubby and their friend.  Hubby spotted a possum in a tree and went for his hunting torch but sadly couldn't relocate it, that would have been something on an already special first day!  We were yet to hear about the problems of possums!

There is no light pollution here so we spent some time stargazing and satellite spotting the Southern skies with Shona and family identifying the birds we could hear, the Morepork (an owl) being the funniest name.