Our New Zealand Adventure: Day 11 Hamilton Gardrns, Riff Raff, Waitomo Glowworm caves, Aranui Caves, night time Ruakari bushwalk

Thurs Jan 11 by Karen,
Time to leave Bowentown and the Alcocks. We headed west on a 2 hour drive to Hamilton. It's not a hardship to drive here, roads are pretty empty and mostly straight. We passed the gorge and L&P bottle again on the way out. In the south of Hamilton lies Hamilton gardens; 50 years ago this was a rubbish dump, now its a lovely place to walk and admire the different gardens from around the world.

Japanese garden

Chinese garden pagoda

Indian Char Bagh garden

Link to 360 photo here

Traditional Maori Planting Garden

Italian renaissance

Tropical planting

Maori cultivation

We spent far more time than we had expected to here and still hadn't seen all the gardens on offer. Jono really wanted to see Riff Raff from the Rocky Horror Show on the site where Richard O Brien used to cut hair towards the centre of Hamilton.

Even the toilets were themed as the lab. I loved the cute metal gargoyles on the top.

We grabbed lunch and sat down by the river which flows through the middle of Hamilton and then walked back along the river path to the car.

We were heading south towards Waitomo and its famous cave systems but on the way stopped off at Otorohangu for a short break and the obligatory coffee and chocolate brownie. The coffee shop was quirky with a chandelier and odd things to sell like books, toiletries and luggage tags. Over the road was the library with Maori poles outside. Otorohangu is a typical small New Zealand town, based around one main street (which has all the shops on it) with houses spreading out on either side. All the towns want passing trade so main street is the main road connecting each town with the next one, they are often quite wide with plenty of free parking on either side of the road.

We went straight to the Waitomo museum when we arrived. This is also the place to book in on cave expeditions so as soon as we had explored the information on glow worms, rock formations and cave weta we got booked in.We were lucky, they managed to book us on the two cave experiences for that day and another one for the following afternoon for after our black water rafting adventure. Jono also tried the cave crawl in the museum. I poked most of myself in, decided it was built for stick thin pre adolescents and that two many of my curvy bits were being prodded and poked painfully and backed out.

in the cave crawl

Jono emerging

Time to race up to our first cave, Aranui, a dry cave reached through the forest and full of stalagtites and rock formations. Our guide, a uni student on a holiday job showed us some of the plants including the paper leaf bush so called because you can write on it (and apparently people have used it to send letters) but also because it can be used as a substitute for toilet tissue. I took a leaf, to see if it could be posted. I'm quite happy with toilet tissue for anything else.

These are cave weta, a cross between grasshoppers and spiders. These are small ones.

We only had 4 people in our group, it was the last tour of the day so we had plenty of chance to stop and look and ask questions, the guide book had recommended the first or last tours and quite by chance ( or because we keep getting sidetracked by interesting things) we'd hit the last one.

Our guide also suggested a night time bush walk to do in the dark and pointed out where it started.

We just had enough time to get booked into our b&b, Waitomo Caves Guest Lodge right next to the museum before heading off to the Glow worm Caves. I'd booked this guesthouse back in July and even then it was the last room available and I could only book one night!

The glow worm caves are probably the most popular cave tour in Waitomo. Over 2000 visitors come through here each day. It's hard to miss as it's covered with an award winning canopy.

Again we were the last tour of the day, 24 people. There was a film show to start with about the people who owned the land, the cave system was on and their sense of connection with the land. Then we went inside where our guide explained about the glow worms, sang a Maori love song in the cathedral (the highest cave in the system) and showed some of the interesting formations. Lastly we piled into a big boat and in eerie silence were pulled through the glow worm caverns. These are really larvae hanging out their sticky fishing lines made of mucus to try and catch insects to eat. They use their glowing backsides to fool the insects to think that they are flying towards the open night sky and the stars. The effect is a magical blue starry cavern as if it's filled with stars.

No photography was allowed here so we purchased the official ones.

I was able to snap Jono just outside the cavern leaving the boat.

Of course there was a gift shop to walk through. I'm normally able to walk through these and quite easily dismiss the items on sale. Not this time. Two t shirts, necklace, earrings and of course the official photos later we left $100 down. The budget had really been blown today!

It was now around 7pm and we were hungry. That sandwich in Hamilton seemed along time ago. There aren't many places to eat in Waitomo in the evening as many visitors are only there for the day. We settled on the General Store which was a cafe, kai and bar in one. Small menu but great food. I finally got to eat the famous green shelled mussels.

lots of birds ready to raid any unattended food

The guesthouse was right next door so we got unpacked and settled while we waited for sunset at 20.46.
We drove back to the start of the Ruakari bush walk. It wasn't quite dark when we started out which helped to see some of the signposts. This would be a spectacular walk in the day time past rushing rivers and waterfalls, suspended on wooden walkways and ducking through narrow passages. At night it was magical. All along the banks of the river the glow worms had lit up and what should have been a 30 minute loop walk took us over an hour as we stopped to wonder and try futilely to capture it on camera. This is one sight you have to see for yourselves.