Has anybody been to the Waitomo Caves recently? Did they have a good experience? Any recommendations for a visit there?

You will find the nearby Aranui Caves as interesting if not more interesting than the Waitomo Caves. The tour guide is excellent at Ananui. You can get some excellent digital pictures. You can buy a combined pass for both caves at Waitomo. The Aranui Caves are about 5 km away from Waitomo. The Waitomo Caves are excellent, but you only get to view the Glowworms for about 5 minutes before you float away. You will probably need to find about 3 hours to see both caves without being hurried.
Enjoy your cave visit. We visited in July 2004.

If you're up for a bit of adventure, take the Black Labyrinth tour offered by Black Water Rafting. www.blackwaterrafting.co.nz

You'll get to take a short hike through a cave to an underground river, where you float on inner tubes while viewing the glowworms. It was a lot of fun and well worth the money - one of the highlights of our NZ trip.

Lee Ann

Thanks for that "inside lowdown" information. (Sorry, just trying to be funny about caving.) Always thought the black water rafting sounded scary, but I might be tempted to give it a go now.

It wasn't scary at all. The only thing that made me a bit nervous was jumping off a waterfall which was about 6-7 feet high. I'm not fond of heights.

Our guide gave us two options - putting our tube around your waist and jumping facing forward, or holding the tube across your bottom and jumping off backward. I decided I'd rather not see where I was landing and jumped backward. It was a blast!

It was just so gorgeous down there once we turned off our headlights. You just lie back in your tube and look up - it's like seeing the Milky Way on a really clear night.

Lee Ann

Waitomo caves was a good experience, but not exciting. Indeed you see the glowworms for only a few minutes, but how many do you have to see?

Whether you should go depends on what you expect to get out of it. I am glad I went.

The caves were really fun although I went in July and it was freezing cold. I did the trip where you put on a wetsuit and abseil about 200 feet below the earth's surface through a really small hole, then swing on some contraption and proceed to inner tube underground for 5 hours to see the glowworms. Its takes about half a day to do and after the initial fear I loved it!

You sound very brave Abby43