Waitomo Caves & Bridal Veil Falls

We took a little adventure north of New Plymouth to the Waitomo Caves and camped (with Black Betty) near the caves. This is a Maori name, wai means water and tomo means cave, so waitomo is water cave. There are several cave tours with different companies, but we went on the most popular Waitomo Glow Worm cave tour. It is a really interesting cave because the river (about the size of the Fraser River) flows right into the solid rock! That is how the entrance to the cave was discovered. We entered through another entrance into a very large cave system. There was some really huge caverns and spaces with lots of stalactites and stalagmites. As we descended the cave we got onto a boat that floated upstream along the river (through the original entrance) to view the glow worms hanging from the ceiling. It was amazing seeing these small worm like animals glowing in complete darkness! The glow worms looked like the stars in night sky. They glow to catch bugs on their sticky spider like string that they suspend from the ceiling. New Zealand is the only place in the world that these animals live. Pretty neat! Unfortunately we couldn't take pictures in the cave so if you want to see more pictures look at this website http://www.waitomo.com/waitomo-glowworm-caves.aspx

From the caves we traveled on some New Zealand "secondary roads" aka dirt. We went up the coast stopping in Kawhia briefly, then heading to Bridal Veil Falls. These falls were pretty amazing. They are as high (55 Meters) as Niagara falls but the river is not as big. Again the river was about the size of the Fraser, but it just got to the edge of this huge drop and then nothing but free falling water. Check out the video!

From the falls we continued up the coast on back roads to a small surfing village called Raglan where we camped the night. This was an interesting little community because it is a surf city located on a river, but just south of town is some of the best surfing in New Zealand. Unfortunately, it was raining so we did not make it to the beach so we may need to visit again this summer!

On our way back to New Plymouth we drove through Hamilton (pretty big city) and Cambridge (known for their horse racing). We then decided to take some more secondary roads to see some different parts. Our map indicted these roads as sealed (paved) roads, but once again we found more gravel roads. The one section of gravel road was one lane for about 25 km. We did not pass one car in the entire section, but lots of sheep! At one point in our drive we got stuck in "Sheep Rush Hour" and had to stop for what I would guess +/- 100 sheep to make their way down the road. We have a pretty sweet video, below. In addition, we learned that when you reach a fork in the road it is either a fork in the road, or a city listed on the map. We would be driving along looking for a city name on our map, but the "city" would consist of nothing more than a blue sign indicating distances to the next "city." On occasion there would be a local farmers house near by, but by no means a city. Literally just a fork in the road!