The first letdown, of course, was the very mixed bag that was the trip to Fraser Island in Australia. The fact that I’ve only had two disappointing tourist experiences in the first four months of travel strikes me as a really good record. Waitomo Caves is a major tourist attraction in the Waikato region of New Zealand, and it’s an efficient operation. But the tour I took wasn’t really worth what I paid for it.

Exiting the Waitomo Caves

The caves were known to the Maori of the area for years, but it wasn’t until a Pakeha and his Maori guide saw the caves in 1887 that tours started arriving. There have been tours here pretty much ever since. There are several different tours to take, and a couple different cave systems with different kinds of formations. I went on the main tour, although there are three to choose from, and you can combine them in different packages. (You can also go on a black water tour, which involves spelunking, floating, and abseiling. That’s the one Liz went on, and she loved it, but I’m too unfit and claustrophobic to attempt it.)

My tour went down to the caves with a quiet older Maori man, and he took us through the caves, which are a lovely white-ish color. (Photos weren’t allowed in the caves at all until just as we were leaving.) He showed us different stalagmites and stalactites, and pointed out the ones that looked like animals and pipe organs. He stood us in the center of the cave and sang us an old Maori song. The acoustics right there are perfect; they’ve held opera concerts there.

Next, he showed us some glowworms in a corner of the cave and talked about their lifecycle, how the shimmery blue color we see is the long, sticky line of the nesting larva, so it can feed. The larva grows for nine months before entering the pupa stage, emerging, mating, and then, of course, dying, as insects do.

Finally, we walked down some steps and entered a dark part of the cave. Here, we were told to keep as quiet as we could, to preserve the mystery of the boat ride. Our guide stood at the bow and moved the boat slowly around the cave by pulling on guide cables strung from the ceiling. The glowworms were lovely, and the cave ceiling was a starry sky of bright blue.

It’s just, well, it was rather small, and the ride was rather short. The ads all showed pictures of a much larger cave, which frankly would have just been more magnificent. It was a smaller, shorter experience than I was expecting, and I suppose that’s the main part of it: expectations. I’d expected something a little different, and I’d paid almost $50, and I was disappointed when expectations didn’t match reality. It happens all the time, although as I said, not too much to me on this trip. Still, all that said, it was a beautiful sight, and gliding through the dark in a boat was a wonderful way to experience the luminescence.