Waitomo Caves - seeing stars

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We arrived in Waitomo after some lovely walks on the way through some dark caves and an old gold mining cave. This was really fun trying to walk through caves with no light and then coming out the other end to the most beautiful scenes of green trees as far as the eye can see and crystal clear lakes hundreds of feet below.

Once in waitomo me and Pete went off for our guided tour of the glow worm caves. The rest of our friends had opted to do the various activities that included tubing through the caves or abseiling and tubing but as we have already done these kind of activities throughout our travels we just opted for the walk and mini boat ride.

The tour was only half an hour and involved walking though the caves and being educated about the stalagmites and stalactites and how they are formed. We were then told about the glow worms and how they use their food to entice their prey and then make silk lines to catch them and eat them. It was actually quite interesting and then we were shown the glow worms hanging from just underneath a piece of low level rock with the long almost clear lines of thread hanging down. It looked really beautiful.

After, we were taken on a boat ride through the caves in complete darkness. All we could see was the glow worms on the roof of the cave - there were hundreds of them lighting the ceiling and because it was pitch black they looked like hundreds of stars on a beautiful clear night. It was really amazing to see as I've never seen anything like it.

This was a great trip and I'm so glad I did it, unfortunately you can't take pictures inside of the glow worms which is the only thing that disappointed me so we had to buy a post card of them.

In the afternoon we also went for a short bush walk in Ruakuri Reserve. It was only a short walk down some steps and into some small caves to a viewing area of the river below flowing over rocks and below the bush canopy. It was nice to stop off here and see some other parts of the area and again more beautiful views of New Zealand.

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