We got up early so we could get on the road and drive up towards the Bay of Islands area. It was a fair drive and we stopped off along the way to make a pancake breakfast. Mel had read about a good walk we could do, so we made a detour to do it. It was further out of the way than we'd thought but when we got there it was so peaceful. There were some caves to explore at the beginning of the walk, the path lead right into them. It wasn't until we were in the pitch dark we realised how creepy it was. Being so quiet you could hear every drop of water and all we had was my little torch that was running low on battery. So it wasn't long before we were out of there. The limestone formations and glow worms were good to look at though. The walk itself wasn't much better; it lead us thought some strange eerily quiet woodland that had huge rocks and boulders laying around everywhere. We were half expecting a troop of orcs to come running over the hill after us! It was worth it though for the view we got over the rolling hills tumbling down to meet the sea. The walk took us around two hours so it was nearly 4_pm by the time we set off back on the road. Along the way we encountered our first traffic jam in New Zealand, I'd forgotten how much I hate traffic. Once through the road works we went to the nearest town to pick up a bottle of wine seeing as it was two years to the day Mel and I got together, then it was back on the road. It was a while before it dawned on us that we were miles away from any DOC site and it was getting late, so we ended pulling over in a laybay for the night which is one of the main reasons we hired a self contained campervan.