Exploring the Breathtaking Ruakuri Cave in Waitomo – Day 26

Today is our first official day in Waitomo and we’re going to start by visiting the Ruakuri Cave. Which is one of the most famous caves in the area. All we know about Ruakuri is it’s a large limestone cave. It’s pretty stunning.

The van is picking us up from the Waitomo Glowworm Caves which makes things easier because the drive down to Ruakuri Cave is on a gravel road.

We hop out of the bus and Paul tells us the Maori legend surround the Ruakuri Cave. To get down to the Ruakuri Cave we have to take a long spiral walkway but just before we start walking Paul flicks on the light and it reveals one-by-one each floor that’s a pretty cool reveal.

Don’t touch the limestone formations. Obviously you don’t want to snap any with your rough horrible hands but also the chemicals on hands can actually react with the limestone and kill the formation itself so looky no touchy.

Along the way there were quite few glowworms too so the guide actually got us to turn off our lights so we could actually see the glowworms really close and you can see the fishing lines going down. So glowworms are basically maggots having a fishing line down there to catch flies and when the flies get stuck on it [slurping noise] nom nom nom. That’s pretty much it.

We’re walking through this cave and there’s an insane amount of rock features the whole ceiling is covered in stalactites and there is stalagmites and there are columns and there’s wavy stuff going on there’s ancient coral. There’s even some fossils.

Stalactites are those big cone shape rock formations coming from the top of the cave. Stalagmites are those big cone-shape formations coming from the bottom of the cave and going up. They are both formed by water dripping and falling off and those kind of things.

We eventually get to this really cool part of the cave which is like a huge cavern full of stalagmites and stalactites and you’re just like: “Oh this is fabulous!” It’s pretty pretty. You just kind of sit there well stand there in silence like: “Ahhh Wow, can you believe this exists on planet Earth?” The whole place is just like a milky white colour as well so that’s… It’s just bizarre! It’s just unusual.

Ton of stalactites and all the walls are all dripping with water and it’s just surreal. It looks like we’re not in the same world right now. It’s oh my God I really love it! And the tour guide had so many insights. it was awesome.

Obviously it’s pretty dark except for the lights on the walkway that’s the only thing you’ve go to guide you down. the good thing is the whole cave and each section we go to is lit up really well so you can get some really nice pictures in there and you don’t need any skills – just point and shoot. All the stuff looks really amazing anyway so it’s impossible to take a bad photo. The tour: I think it lasts about an hour and you get to see a little bit of everything. You get to see all the awesome rock formations in this cave. you also get to see the glowworms. you get to see the close-up of the glowworms. All the while, you are keeping dry, you don’t have to do any crazy activities just to see how awesome these caves are which is the beauty of this Ruakuri Cave tour and also it doesn’t take too long either. I mean, if you’ve got an hour to spare in your day in Waitomo, it’s a cool little tour to do.

The tour is finished now. It’s time to go back for a lovely night at the Juno Hall Backpackers.

Run, run, he’s losing it. What? Robin! You scared the fucking shit out of me. You horrible… Oh my God I was so confused. You are going to die. Were you recording that? You are such a little shit.