- Come down into the bowels of the earth and on a dark, night-black river, catch a vision of a starry sky...
New Zealand as a tourist destination has the advantage of having its various attractions -- such as the Waitomo Glow-Worm Cave and various other sightseeing areas -- close enough to one another that one can in fact visit the country’s most popular places on a motorcar tour within a fortnight or so.
Five-day tours
If visiting for a shorter period, you can tour either the North or South Island in just about five days.
On the North Island, you can visit the geysers at Rotorua, go underground at Waitomo and throw in a trip to the Bay of Islands, or go as far north as Cape Reinga, or south to Wellington -- all in less than a week.
Caves and underground rivers
But let’s look at Waitomo, a tiny town with a population of only about 300, which in a year is visited by more than half a million people.
If you drive from Rotorua to Waitomo, it will take you about three hours from one to the other -- but immediately you’ll notice a vast difference in the makeup of the land.
(Driving south from Auckland should take about three hours as well.)
From the bubbling mud of Rotorua you come to a world of caves and subterranean rivers.
Limestone landscape
Fifty kilometres of caves help create a karst limestone landscape with blind valleys, sinkholes and springs. The caves are rich with stalactites and stalagmites which form an underground fantasyland with mythic figures that can fill one with awe.
The centrepiece of Waitomo attractions is the Glow-Worm Cave, the most popular of the Waitomo caves, with an underground river running through it.
Subterranean tour
You are guided through a subterranean tour of the cave's various unique limestone formations before you board a boat on the underground river.
You sail in pitch darkness through the Glow-Worm Grotto and when you look up, suddenly there are a myriad twinkling lights in the curve of the dome above you. The lights don't actually twinkle but this starry vision can make you think they do.
Eerie firmament
The glow-worms (Arachnocampa luminosa) of the Waitomo caves create an eerie underground firmament seeded with pinpricks of light and, in your subterranean surroundings with black water lapping at your boat, you know you are in the presence of one of Nature’s wonders.
- The whole Waitomo Glow-Worm Cave tour and underground boat ride take about 45 minutes.
- You can organise your Glow-Worm Cave tour from the Museum of Caves in the heart of town less than 10 kilometres west of State Highway 3.
- Or you can join a bus tour from Auckland or Rotorua.
The better-known caves
The whole Waitomo region is riddled with caves, of which the better known are the Glow-Worm, Ruakuri and Aranui Caves.
No river runs through the Aranui Cave, so there are no glow-worms (which live in moist environments) there. A tour through the Aranui Cave takes about 45 minutes. Hollow "straw" stalactites are a feature of the Aranui.
There are no walking tours through the Ruakuri Cave which is open only for blackwater rafting.
It is a large, active cave with dripping caverns where stalactites and stalagmites are continually being formed.
Where to stay
Accommodation is limited in Waitomo itself and you may prefer to stay in Hamilton, an hour's drive north from Waitomo, or Taupo two hours away southeast.
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