Waitomo Caves

The Tongariro Crossing took the wind out of us. A shrill, cold, gusty punch in the guts. So when we woke up the next morning to brilliantly sunny skies in National Park village, we knew we had to leave quickly, before a profound sense of regret for not waiting a day to do the Crossing in such perfect weather swallowed us whole. Still, bolt though we did, we couldn’t really avoid glancing up at the deliciously blue sky now and then, and sighing forlornly. Hindsight is such a slippery bastard.

We covered the 144 kilometres to Waitomo in less than two hours, with the inland route offering the standard fare of tiny towns and lots of sheep. Bolstered by a scrumptious breakfast at a highway café, we tore into Waitomo, eager for the next adventure. Not entirely educated about what it had to offer besides the numerous limestone caves, we were only mildly surprised when we discovered that Waitomo was the veritable one-lane town, even more so than National Park village. Still, differences exist – while National Park has a more rugged, country-Western sort of feel to it, Waitomo is more… upmarket. Definitely more yuppie. National Park belongs to the grubby, down-n-dirty trampers, Waitomo is for the adventure-elite. It offers manicured “adventure activities”, complete with a “coffee-break and warm showers” at the end of the “adventure”.

I don’t do it justice, though. It really is a good place to head to for a day, for some truly wonderful spelunking and underground sights. Waitomo’s claim to fame is its Glowworm Cave, which, amazingly enough, is host to thousands of glow-worms, dogged long-term residents despite the innumerable unwelcome human guests they have to tolerate each year. The cave in itself is unremarkable (by cave standards, that is. Not that I’d know any better, but hey, I’ve seen pictures! Spectacular photographs of caves in… er… other places!), with the regular assortment of stalactites and stalagmites. The magic begins later, however, when you hop onto a boat and paddle along an underground river, face upturned. A few seconds for your eyes to adjust to the darkness is all it takes, and suddenly, a night-sky descends upon you, in all its fluorescent-green glory. You’d be forgiven for drawing fictional constellations of your own in your head – the resemblance to a star-studded sky is uncanny. There are other glow-worm caves elsewhere in New Zealand, but the one in Waitomo is the most densely populated.

Cave sights apart, there were other… eccentricities to contend with. Most significantly, there was definitely something oddly creepy about our tour guide, a Kiwi named ‘Savitri’. While her pronunciation of her own name was baffling, to say the least, there was also the disconcerting way in which she stared at each of us like we were alien marauders from a neighbouring galaxy. Most unsettling, however, was the tone she adopted with the kids doing the tour. Anyone knows I’m not a devoted fan of children, but I’m miles away from this woman’s mastery of the art of veiled loathing. While most of her conversations with the yell-ey mites on the tour were civilised and gentle, she’d slip in the odd evil-sounding reproach with expert guile. Something like, “Now kids, you really do need to behave, or you wouldn’t want to disappear somewhere within the black, underground river, would you? Hmmm?” Followed by a saccharine smile. I kid you not.