It was another early morning, as I booked a 9:30am tour to visit the Waitomo Glowworm Caves, which are about a 2 hour drive away from Rotorua. I woke up around 6:30am again since we were told to get there thirty minutes early. I have a feeling that in New Zealand they always say to be half an hour early to things because Kiwis are so laid back, they must usually run late. I arrived at 9am at the Waitomo Caves Visitors Centre and got to relax for a while before the tour started on time.

We were not allowed to take photos in the caves because they used to be used as a Maori burial site. If I find photos online I will include them.

The tour through the caves took about an hour. Our tour guide, Taylor, started by explaining how the caves were formed: the stone was eroded away by a river which is now further underground. We examined some cool stalactite and stalagmite formations, before going to an unlit area where the glowworms are visible. The glowworms are actually a species of fly that is bioluminescent during its maggot stage. They burrow into the ceiling of the cave and form a web-like structure similar to a spider, which they use to trap surface bugs that end up in the cave and get confused, thinking the glowing in the ceiling is actually the night sky. At the bottom of the cave there is a flooded chamber with a couple of boats, and we all got into the boats and went around a corner where there is a completely dark chamber with tons of visible glowworms.

After visiting the cave I checked the weather for the Tongariro Crossing, because tomorrow would be my last chance to do it, and as it turns out it seems the weather will be good enough to go. This prompted me to change my plans and book a hotel near Tongariro National Park, and a shuttle to take me from the end to the start of the hike.

I had booked the glowworm cave tour to be so early because I wanted to have flexibility for this afternoon. I was originally supposed to go diving tomorrow, and the drive to the dive site would be more than 5 hours from Waitomo; the drive to Auckland (where I would go if I didn't hike and didn't dive) would be 3 hours; the drive to National Park Village, where I was now planning to spend the night, would be 2 hours, but I had no idea what to do between Waitomo and the park. I went to the visitors centre, and saw that there were some waterfalls nearby I could drive to. The thirty minute drive ended up being an hour because of road work, but I made it to the Marokopa Falls, which was only about a ten minute round-trip hike to some very large falls.

From the Marokopa falls, it was about a 2.5 hour drive to National Park Village. The scenery along the drive was nice but it was also pretty rainy. Once I got to the village, I drove another forty minutes to the other side of the park to see another set of waterfalls, Mangawhero Falls, which was also a filming location for Lord of the Rings. These are a tall thin falls with a nice pool at the bottom.

From Mangawhero Falls I drove to Tawhai Falls, located only ten minutes from National Park Village, it was another quick walk to see more waterfalls that were also used in filming the Lord of the Rings.

I then returned to National Park Village and got situated in the hostel there. It is a tiny village, and it is the highest urban town in New Zealand at 825m elevation. The hostel was full of other people who are hoping to do the Tongariro Crossing Hike tomorrow, and it seems like more people showed up hoping to spend the night without a booking and may have been turned away.

There are only a couple of places to eat in National Park and there isn't a full grocery store, only a convenience store. I walked seven minutes to the other side of the town to a food truck called Camokai Takeaways and got an Hawaiian Chicken Burger, which was a lot of food, very tasty, and only NZ$18 ($12).

I went back to my room and ended up spending a long time talking to a 50-something-year-old guy who had spent all day sitting in the room. He spent his entire adult life roaming around Australia doing various jobs like farm work, fishing, etc, and he was talking at length about how he wants to travel around America one day.