Waitomo Caves

Why it matters

The name tells you what the country is made of. Wai is water in Māori and tomo is a hole in the ground — a word cavers have since borrowed for the shafts that drop out of the fields here. Rain works its way into the limestone, dissolves it and carries it off, and what is left behind is a landscape of hollows on the surface and passages beneath it. Te Ara, the government’s encyclopaedia, calls the Waitomo Caves New Zealand’s most popular tourist caves.

What people come to see is alive. The glowworms are not worms at all but the luminous larvae of a small gnat, Arachnocampa luminosa, and in the right cave they turn a ceiling into a night sky. The same animal lives in caves right around the country; Waitomo is simply where most visitors meet it.

The story of the first visit is also a Māori one. On 28 December 1887 Tāne Tinorau, who owned the land, and the surveyor Fred Mace floated down a stream into the cave on a raft of flax flower stalks, lighting their way with burning brands. By 1889 Tinorau was taking visitors in. The Crown took the Glowworm Cave over in 1904, under the Scenery Preservation Act 1903, and ran it for most of the century that followed. Then the land and the caves went back. Discover Waitomo, which operates the caves today, dates the return to 1989; Te Ara dates it to 1990, to majority Māori ownership after an inquiry by the Waitangi Tribunal. We could not settle the year, and it matters less than the fact. Many of the people who work at the caves today are descendants of Tāne Tinorau and his wife Huti.

What it's like

The Glowworm Cave starts as a walk. Paths and handrails lead down through decorated chambers, some of them wet and slippery underfoot, while your eyes adjust to the dark. Then you step into a boat on the underground stream, and the boat moves out beneath the grotto.

Ruakuri is a different kind of visit and a longer one. You go in down a spiral walkway into the hill, and the tour takes about two hours among formations and glowworms seen close up, on paths designed for wheelchairs and pushchairs. The cave and its visitor centre run on renewable energy. Spellbound, fifteen kilometres away near Te Kūiti, is smaller in every sense: a drive across a farm, a minibus, a group of no more than twelve, a walk to the cave and a boat ride of around twenty minutes beneath the glowworms.

And then there is the wet version. On a black water rafting trip you wear a wetsuit and float through a cave stream on a rubber tube, a way of seeing Waitomo that began in Ruakuri in 1987.

A fair word about the famous forty-five minutes. The grotto is the image everyone knows, and it deserves its fame. But it is a short tour in a shared boat, and it is the one we most often read complaints about for being over too soon. In the threads we read, people who have done more than one cave here tend to recommend Ruakuri, Spellbound or a black water trip as the visit they remember, and the famous grotto as the one to add, not the one to rely on.

How to visit

The main options. Three companies run caves at Waitomo, and between them they cover everything from a gentle walk to sixty metres of abseiling. These are their own published adult prices.

Getting there by car. Discover Waitomo’s own figures put the village 71 kilometres and an hour from Hamilton, 202 kilometres and two and a half hours from Auckland, and two hours from Rotorua. Treat those as the least the drive will take: these are country roads, and a map’s time is rarely the day’s. We came up from New Plymouth to Hamilton on a road that passes close by, and did not have the time to stop — so this page is research, not a visit. Ruakuri is a short drive from the Glowworm Cave and needs your own transport even from the village, and Spellbound departs from 334 Boddies Road, Oparure, which is not in Waitomo at all.

Without a car. GreatSights runs day coach tours daily from Auckland and Rotorua, with hotel pickup and one-way or return options. Discover Waitomo’s own transport page lists coach tours rather than a public bus, which is one more reason Hamilton works best as a base for people who are driving.

Access. The Glowworm Cave suits anyone with reasonable mobility but has no wheelchair access; Ruakuri has full wheelchair and pushchair access, and Discover Waitomo asks wheelchair users to contact it before visiting. Spellbound asks that you can walk gently, unaided, for up to 45 minutes. Both black water trips need a minimum weight of 45 kilograms, and Waitomo Adventures sets minimum ages for its abseils.

Making the most of it

Choose by what you want from the dark. If you want the picture everyone knows, take the Glowworm Cave — and if you have the time, add Ruakuri with it on the combined ticket, which is where you see the glowworms closest. If you want a small group, take Spellbound. If you are travelling with a wheelchair or a pushchair, Ruakuri is the cave built for you. If you want to get wet, the Black Labyrinth is the shorter trip and the Black Abyss the longer, harder day; bring swimwear and a towel. And if you want to go down on a rope, Waitomo Adventures does that.

See glowworms for nothing. The Department of Conservation’s Ruakuri Walk, four kilometres from the village off Tumutumu Road, is a one-kilometre loop along the Waitomo Stream past limestone bluffs and arches to an underground viewing platform over a natural bridge. After dark there are glowworms on the track, and DOC says the best place is beside the main bridge. It has many stairs and steep, muddy sections, and the entrance to the platform is dark, so take a torch and your time.

Photographs. Discover Waitomo lists photography as permitted in Ruakuri, in selected areas, and in Aranui — but not in the Glowworm Cave, so assume not there, and ask. Spellbound describes its tours as camera friendly.

With Hobbiton in the same day. It can be done from Hamilton, with a morning cave and an afternoon at Hobbiton; Discover Waitomo puts Matamata 83 kilometres and an hour and a quarter away. It is a full day of driving between two things that each deserve attention, and both need booking ahead.

Nearby

Hamilton is the base, an hour away, and it puts Waitomo, Hobbiton and the surf town of Raglan all within a comfortable drive. Hobbiton is the natural pairing, and the two could hardly be more different: one a film set built to be looked at, the other a real underworld best seen with the lights off.

If you are also heading south to Fiordland, read our page on the Te Ana-au glowworm caves before you book both. The glowworms are the same animal. What differs is the cave and the journey to it, and the price.