New Zealand on a tight budget. Day 9

Well the campsite had a few surprises after it went dark - like the art installation/facility called Daddy's Bar which lit up after dark as did several decorations in the trees!
Our tour of Northland ended with quite an adventure. The Waipu Caves are full of glow worms - and unlike the very famous Waitoma Caves they are free to enter. there's just one draw back - it's proper caving to get in far enough to see them. Now this was quite a way out of my comfort zone and we made it way harder than we should have as we seemed to be the first people in and took several wrong turns, wading through waist deep water, crawling through mud etc etc. We had actually given up and turned round when we found the glow worm cave. it was like looking up at the Milky Way and seemed all the more special as it had been hard work to get there and we had it pretty much to our selves. We sat in on a very informative school party talk afterwards. Not sure we'll fork out the $100 to go to Waitoma now.
We then had a long drive past and through Auckland - luckily I was driving so Lester got some shots of the impressive skyline - before we left the beaten track for many miles of unbeaten track to Bridal Veil Falls. Not as tall as its namesake in Yosemite but with a lot more water in it dropping 55 metres over basalt columns.
We rattled on down the dirt track to Kawhia arriving late to a beautiful sunset over the estuary. Considering it was only ever going to be a driving day its been quite eventful!