After our river adventure, it felt like time to do something less strenuous. We opted to head up to the Waitomo Caves which are in the Waikato and Waitomo region en route to Hamilton.  The name ‘Waitomo’ comes from the Maori words wai (water) and tomo (hole).

On arrival at the Caves, we discovered that Waitomo Caves are just one of the caves on offer – the whole region is chocka with limestone caves, running with underwater rivers. There are all kinds of ways you can venture through these caves – black water rafting, abseiling, caving etc but they all demand high levels of energy (not to mention cash!) which we felt short of today! We opted for the bog standard guided tour of the cave – no rafts, no ropes, just good old Shank’s Pony! The guided tours are still quite pricey and it was immediately obvious that the whole place is a mega tourist trap designed to wring as much cash out of you as possible.

On the other hand, the tours are guided by the descendants of the Maori Chief who first opened up the caves to tourists, and they do give a very nice tour. They show you the normal cave stuff – stalactites and stalagmites with funny names, caves with vaulted ceilings etc, etc. If you’ve been to Cheddar Gorge you’ll know the drill. However, then they lead you down into the dark and ask you to be quiet and turn off all the lights. At which point you see that the ceiling is dotted with thousands of tiny glow worms. It’s really very pretty. THEN they put you on boats and push you silently down the underground river, which is completely dark apart from the canopy of glow worms. Sadly I can’t show you any pictures, as photos are not allowed in the caves, but there was a touch of magic there.

After going in the caves, we felt a little short changed, as the tour is only 45 minute, so we decided to explore the local area. The woman behind the desk at the campsite recommended the Ruakuri Bush Walk. There’s a nice easy trail to the top of the walk which starts from the car park of Waitomo Caves. It travels along a small stream for a couple of miles across open farmland. The farm land was dotted with large rocks and was reminiscent of Dartmoor.

After about three kilometres, we reached the start of the Ruakuri Bush Walk, a circuit which takes you into some spectacular scenery in a very short space of time. In the Waitomo caves, I learned that glow worms are a bit like spiders – they put out a web of threads to catch flying insects in. They depend on a nice healthy forest above ground for the insects to breed in.  So, the owners of Waitomo Caves work hard to preserve the above ground environment as well as the caves.

After winding our way through a beautiful forest, we climbed steeply upwards to see a network of small caves, arches and tunnels.  I climbed up and entered a small cave perched just above the river. It was clear from the worn footsteps around the cave that I wasn’t the first to make the climb.

Later, we both crawled through a low tunnel to reach a viewing platform where we could see the river go under an arch and disappear underground.

Around the next corner, we descended some steps into a huge cave. We stood on a viewing platform and looked down at the river thundering below us. If it had been dark, we could have seen glow worms in this cave – for free! In fact, there are glow worms in caves and along river banks all over New Zealand which you can see for free. But for sheer numbers of glow worms, the Waitomo Caves are definitely worth a look.