Day 26: Waitomo Caves
Today was a rainy day – perfect for visiting caves! The caves in the Waitomo area are New Zealand’s most famous caves, and we decided to spend the whole day there to visit all three: Ruakuri, Aranui, and Waitomo. Our RV rental company, Britz, had a special “driver goes free” deal with the Waitomo Caves, so we got a 2-for-1 deal on our ticket fees – score!
The first cave we went to was our favorite: Ruakuri. The entrance is via a man-made tunnel with a huge spiral staircase. There is a natural entrance of course, but apparently a Maori chief is buried there, so the government created a new entrance out of respect.
Concrete entrance to the Ruakuri Cave
Spiral staircase and entry fountain
Not only are the cave formations really cool, but this cave also gave us our first look at glowworms! And we got a really close-up look too – we could see the little strings and beads the glowworms hang from the ceiling to catch their prey (similar to a spider-web). Actually, glowworms are not actually worms, but fly-larvae (but no one will pay to see ‘glow-maggots” –Marketing!) – the glow they produce is similar to a fire-fly, but it’s to trick other bugs trapped in the caves into thinking it’s the night sky & a way out of the cave – when the bugs fly up into the ceiling they get stuck on the strings and become dinner.
Original sign from Maori landowner protesting tours led through the burial site in the 1980s. The cave was shut down for about 20 years until the new entrance was complete in 2005.
Fossilized scallop shell & “The Pretties”
Glowworms! Note to self: bring tripod for dark-location photography
The Aranui Cave was a dry cave (no water, means no bugs, which means no glowworms), but the formations were still very nice.
“Elephant ears” at the entrance to the Aranui Cave
Very long & tall stalactites & stagamites
Waitomo Cave was our least favorite cave. First of all, they have a no photos rule. Igor thinks the rule is to force tourists to buy the $40 Photo-shopped picture in the gift shop – Lindsay thinks it is to keep the tours running quickly. The place is like Disneyland, with a new group running every 30 minutes. As it is a 45min tour, each group is right on top of each other and the majority of the time is spent waiting for the previous tour group to walk-through / get on the boats. The number of glowworms is amazing – it really does look like the night sky – but the whole experience is not magical. Still worth doing, unless you can only pick one – if so, Ruakuri wins our votes.
Waitomo-Disneyland: long lines for the “rides”