Week 2 NZ raglan to tauranga we left auckland in the hope of watching the bodyboarders in action but the weather was a bit crap and the girls werent that interested so i explored on my tod. next stop was waitomo caves for a look at some glowworms. we did a tour through the caves, got to see stalagtites and stalagmites and glowworm feeding lines (worm spit as it turns out, lovely!) before our boat ride. this took us through the dark glowworm cave, which was amazing and apparently contains 10,000 glowworms. not allowed to take pics though, boring! now selina has a fairy light theory and a plan to make money! the idea after this was to spend the night in hamilton, which we drove around a lot. but it turned out that all of the cheap accomodation was booked up, so we went to thames, a small town at the start of the coromandel peninsula. the weather wasnt the best (1000 piece jigsaw in one day, sad i know) but i made a break for it in a sunny spot and visited the butterfly and orchid house, which was very pretty but only took me 30 mins. our next stop was pure luxuary! remember Brian and Gaye from the 90 mile beach tour, well we spent a couple of days based at theor 5 bedroo complete with bath tub, washer, dryer and dishwasher beach house. lovely lovely Brian and gaye! from the beach house we did cathedral cove, very pretty though the walk was longer then we expected and hot water beach. you literally take a spade and dig your own hot tub! the water is scolding! far as our single pink plastic spade would have gotten us, we dug a joint hole with an older couple. sel and ellie got right in but rita and i opted to paddle (at times the water was just too hot and it would have been a long cold walk back to the car, so yea i was a wuss) sadly then we had to leave the beach house and head to Rotorua via tauranga and mount maunganui. it wasnt until rotorua that i realised i couldnt find my phone - probably still enjouying itself in the bed at the beachhouse. very clever beth!