First of all we planned not to visit the Waitomo caves, made up our minds and went there, for good reasons, as we found out. We visited the Glowworm Caves, a very special experience for us. All those worms send out a blueish kind of light. It looks as if you were standing under the milky way.

Our next Campground was directly by the sea. Beautiful black sand - but unfortunately it was raining cats and dogs. During the night, there was a heavy storm, almost a gale, that even shook our car. For dinner we got a fresh caught fish from a fisherman who had no use for it. A very new experience: clean a fish on the beach in heavy rain...

The next day, we had weather... What kind is hard to say. Something in between rain and sun. A lot of both but still nothing real.

Our goal was the Taranaki. We wanted good pictures of this beautiful volcano cone and planed to do some hiking too. Pictures were easily possible but not good ones... Most of the upper part of the volcano was in the clouds. Our hiking plans weren't disrupted by the clouds as we didn't want to hike up to the peak anyway. We made a short walk in a rhododendron park with beautiful blooming bushes. Afterwards we went farther up to the visitor-info where we started a little loop. It was a nice little stroll through the cloud-forest of Taranaki and its mossy trees.

We stayed near the volcano and had still the hope to see the whole mountain without clouds the next day. This hope was soon gone the next morning when we were woken up by a dropping sound on our car roof. Luckily there was strong wind blowing some clouds away so that we could make another short walk. We even had a glance on the upper part of the cone but the whole peak was never cloudless.

Then there was rain. More rain. Again more rain and then really heavy rain followed by strong winds. We were almost blown off the road.