New Zealand Caves

I visited a number of caves in New Zealand. The North Island caves, concentrated around Waitomo, tended to be more decorated with stalactites and stalagmites. The South Island caves I saw were mostly newer, more active caves with a lot of water and fewer formations. Commercial cave trips in New Zealand range from the familiar guided tourist trips, with lighting, easy walkways, and sometimes boat rides, to more adventurous trips involving rappelling, wet suits, waterfalls, inner tubes, tight crawls, and other assorted fun.

The common feature to all of the caves was the glow worms. The glow worms are endlessly fascinating, looking like blue stars on the ceiling. In some places, like here, there are so many you can see by them. They use the light to attract flying insects that wash into the cave. The insects are caught in webs hanging down, and eaten.

Waitomo Glow Worm Cave

The glow worm cave in Waitomo is the one that gave the town its name. It remains the most popular tourist attraction, drawing the vast majority of visitors to Waitomo, who come in busses, see the cave, and leave. I visited the cave with the last tour of the day, after the busses had all departed. The guide obviously enjoyed this small group tour, and we visited areas that cannot be visited by the larger groups, because they would raise the carbon dioxide content too much, damaging the delicate formations.

While the formations are spectacular, the cave is best known for its famous glow worm grotto. I saw glow worms in every cave I visited in New Zealand, but this grotto was by far the best. There were so many glow worms you could see by them.

The Lost World

The Lost World is a cave in which a section of the roof collapsed long ago, creating a 300 foot deep hole in the ground. The main attraction is the rappel to the bottom of the hole. They claim that it is the largest commercial rappel in the world. It is a beautiful hole, green and misty, with interesting rock formations around the ends. After reaching the bottom, the trip then proceeds into the cave. Both a short dry trip and a long wet one are possible. I did the short one so I would have time for other caves. We went far enough to see some small stalactites and a few glow worms, and then ascended via a series of ladders and climbs.

Haggis Honking Holes

This cave, named for the farmer owning the land where it is found, is great fun. The trip involves both wet suits and rappelling, following streams down waterfalls and past some of the best formations I saw in New Zealand, including soda straws a couple feet long. This trip had everything: crawls, rappelling, climbs, even a few glow worms. One of the rappels was very wet, right through a small waterfall into a pool, followed by a crawl along the stream through a very low tunnel. This trip is run by the same people as Lost World, and I did them both in one day as the "Gruesome Twosome". In fact, I only had 15 minutes between them to get dinner. One of the guides also did both trips.

Waitomo Black Water Rafting

Black Water Rafting, or tubing in a cave, is a very popular adventure. We had had a lot of rain, so the water was about as high as it could be and was really moving. In fact, there were some pretty good rapids, and I fell out of the tube once. In more peaceful parts, we floated in the dark beneath glow worms. I did the short trip here also, but a six hour version, Black Water Rafting II, is also possible. This trip combines the tubing with other caving activities.

Taniwha Cave Rafting

The idea of floating through a cave in inner tubes has spread to the South Island as well. I also did a half-day cave trip near Greymouth that included some tubing, as well as assorted crawls. That cave had plenty of glow worms too, but the formations were rather small. Stalactites are relatively rare in the South Island caves, which are still in a very active stage of development. One crawl, the "Love Tunnel", was done without lights. The last crawl, through a series of flowstone tunnels between pools of water, heading up to the entrance, was one of the most beautiful and interesting cave passages I have seen anywhere. The two inner tube floats were relatively brief, compared to Waitomo. The first went through a very nice glow worm tunnel.

As an added bonus, this trip ended with a slide in a creek down a slick rock on a piece of foam rubber. The fast ride was described as the riskiest part of the trip, and it is not hard to believe that. A spa was available afterward to warm up after the trip. The guide said that an even better trip of a similar nature was available near Charleston, further north, in the Te Tahi tomo. I didn't get that far up the coast, but I also heard good things about the Xanadu cave rafting trip there.

Te-Ana-Eu Glow Worm Caves

The Te-Ana-Eu Caves are probably the most popular tourist cave on the South Island. This is a rather short cave tour, with very little walking, getting quickly to the boat ride through the glow worm grotto. In fact, a short boat ride is required just to get into the cave. The brief walk passes a nice waterfall, and follows a stream to the glow worm grotto, which is fairly impressive, but no match for the Waitomo grotto. Still, it is hard to get enough of glow worms.

These caves are accessed by a fairly long boat ride across Lake Te Anau, so most of the trip is spent getting there and back, or waiting to get into the cave, since they can take more people on the boat than can go in the cave at once.

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