Day 38 - Sunday 11 February 2024

Awake early and into breakfast, then packed away again to leave Rotorua this morning.

The first decisions of the morning were made nice and early; I would not be re-visiting the Skyline Luge again this morning just to get video footage; there is a long way to go on this trip, and I may need the cash for something else later. I'll be visiting the luge at Skyline Queenstown, so I'll get the footage I want there.

The second decision was what I was going to do today; my accommodation this evening is at Waitomo, and I had planned to have a look at their Glow worm caves. The most famous caves were fully booked today and tomorrow, so I've selected a different cave to visit at Ruakuri Caves, and I booked myself in on the 14:30 tour. 

So, all packed and ready to go, I was delayed by a Chinese family who were loading up their van and didn’t seem inclined to move for me. Away at 09:30, and a leisurely drive to Waitomo; I was enjoying the scenery so was only poodling along at 80kph (50mph), but I was pulling over whenever anyone faster than me was behind me.

A stop for coffee and an apple turnover at around 11.00, and another stop where a sign indicated a ‘big pukeko’ ….. this was a big model of a pukeko bird in the middle of a small lake with a path circumnavigating it; it was an opportunity to stretch my legs. Then onwards once to Waitomo. I stopped at the information office to see whether there was any possibility of getting into the Waitomo Glowworm Caves, and they could fit me in a 13:00 tomorrow, but I’m expecting to be in Taupo by then.

I stopped off at the Glowworm Caves to see whether there was the same answer, and they could have slotted me in at 18:00 this evening, but I expected to be settled at my accommodation by then, so declined.

The caves I had decided to explore are the Ruakuri caves; I was booked onto the 14:30 tour, but I arrived very early at 12:55. I checked in, and was told that I could join the 13:00 tour just about to leave, but that was full of kids so I declined. Shortly before the 14:00 tour, I was offered a spot on that, and as it was a small party I happily accepted; I feel like I’ve landed on my feet again!

We heard the story about how the cave had been discovered; a Mauri raiding party had come to attack the local tribe, and while hunting some warriors had happened across the cave, and been attacked by dogs that lived there (the English translation of the caves name ‘Ruakuri’ is ‘Den of dogs). They returned and killed the dogs which were good as food and their fur was highly prized, and then attacked the village and killed their chieftain. What you win you keep, so the defeated tribe’s lands became part of the victors land.

The chieftain who won had his bones buried in another cave nearby when he died, so the land became sacred. When the descendants of these Maori wanted to open up the cave for tourism in the early 20^th century, they were successful for a couple of years when the government took it over, reclaiming the land with the entrance. Then in the 1980, the old land owners had talks with the government about compensation for the land and lost income; the government wasn’t having any of this, so the owners took matters into their own hands. At the same time, the local Maori elders were getting increasingly concerned about the number of tourists crossing their sacred ground to access the caves.

Some New Zealand laws came from the English legal system, and so can be traced back to Magna Carta, which set out the concept that if you owned a bit of land, then you owned it from the centre of the earth to the heavens. The land the government has claimed only included the entrance, but the cave still lays below land owned by the original owner, so their descendants put up a ‘No trespassing’ sign where the cave entered their land. The government therefore closed the cave for good.

The land owners got together with a New Zealand company, and created an entrance on their land by creating a 15 meter wide vertical shaft, and then tunnelling in horizontally when they were at cave level. This access was opened to the public in 2005. The original entrance remains closed, and the ‘No Trespassing’ sign remains in situ.

The cave itself wasn’t quite like any other cave I’ve been in; it runs along a fault line so is pretty much a straight line. Within the cave are glowworms; the larval stage of a fly that spin lines down from the cavern ceilings to catch any insects that are attracted by the bioluminescent glow that they emit from their tails. Unfortunately it was too dark to get any photos of these glowworms.

The caves themselves are limestone from a shallow sea bed that was forced upwards when the Australasian plate and pacific plates collided. There were plenty of Stalactites and Stalagmites to look at, along with curtains and fossilised Oyster and Scallop shells. All in all, a very interesting and informative hour and a half.

Then to find my accommodation for the night; Waitomo Orchard B&B. It was a self-service checkin, and I was all settled by just after 16:00. Up the road for a dinner of Nacho's, and back to the B&B for a bit of reading  (the first time since I left French Polynesia as I couldn't find the Wi-fi password) before bed.