Waitomo Caves

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05/06/09 Friday Day 294
Cool and cold day today. Got the bus from Sky City at 8.15am. Our bus journey was part of the Great Sights bus tour to Rotorua via Waitomo Caves which was where we were getting off and it included a running commentary by the driver along the way. We got to Waitomo Caves village around 11am and booked one of the cave tours at the information centre right where the bus dropped us. When we asked for directions to our hostel she told us it was 2 kilometres away and with no taxi service we had a bit of a walk. It turned out to be only about 1 kilometre away so it wasn’t too bad. After checking in we headed back into the village to get some lunch. There’s very few places to eat here, only about 2 or 3 places. We ate in Curlys bar and restaurant which is also the only bar in town. Nice place and they have about 20 beers on tap by the looks of it! After lunch we then had to walk to the caves, which according to a sign post was 500 metres away. It was about 200 metres. Only took like 5 minutes to walk. We went for the two cave tour, the Aranui cave and then the Glowworm cave which is the main highlight. Class caves too made of limestone. There’s some massive caverns in the Aranui cave.
The Glowworm cave was amazing. It included a small boat trip through a river through the cave where there were hundreds of little glowworms on the ceiling. Our tour guide also sang a few bars of a song in the cathedral section of the glowworm cave. ‘Summer Time’ I believe it was she sang. There’s great acoustics down there too because the limestone absorbers all the sound so there’s no echo in there.
After we were all caved out we got some few supplies in the caravan park reception in the village as it’s the only grocery shop in the place. Tomorrow we head for Rotorua.

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