Exploring Onepoto Caves in Te Urewera

Bluffs, wetas and jigsaw caves

It’s not long into the walk at all until we start to see some crazy rock formation. We walk alongside small bluffs to begin with that just randomly appear between the trees. Then we notice that some of these bluffs are on a bit of a lean. The leaning gets more and more exaggerated, until we find a huge slab of rock leaning over so much than, indeed, it looks like a cave: it’s rocky, it’s dark, it’s a cave, right? You can even crawl in further for a closer inspection into the cave.

Unlike “proper caves”, the Onepoto Caves have been formed by a huge landslide that occurred due to an earthquake some 2,200 years ago – the same landslide that formed Lake Waikaremoana. These huge blocks of sandstone rock broke into jigsaw-like pieces, some stacking on top of each other to form these cave-like features. As we explore the caves, there will be sudden drops where there are gaps in the blocks of rock, so we gingerly walk inside. We shine our light to the ceiling hoping to see some cave weta, like what we had seen during a recent white water rafting trip. Sure enough, we see the little critters crawling about on the ceiling, their dark shells making them easy to see against the white rock.

We spend quite a lot of time in the first cave-like structure, not realising that the caves are only going to get better and more adventurous…

Gollum has just emerged from his cave

Side tracks and splitting up

Continuing on the track, there are a few side tracks that peak our interest. One of which leads to a little grotto with a huge layered bluff on one side and a small cave on the other. Sometimes, we don’t even need to take the same route to continue on the track, as Laura heads overground and Robin takes a tunnel underneath. (See we don’t spend TOO much time together on this trip).

During this time when we are split up, all we can hear from each other is: “Cool!”, “Oh Wow”, “Come and look at this!”, “I can’t we’re not in the same area, you idiot,” etc. There is literally something interesting to see around every corner on the Onepoto Caves track, and trust us, there are a lot of corners.

An epic viewpoint

After clambering through perhaps five or six different sections of caves, we arrive at a cliff side overlooking a huge intact bluff with very distinct layers of rock. The forest canopy is now below us. With the piece of rock sticking over the edge, Laura wants Robin to hold here like The Lion King. When he refuses, she just settles with a sitting down pose on the rock – boring.