Review: Glowworm Waitomo & Ruakuri Cave Tour From Auckland, New Zealand

So I had heard that a must see when visiting New Zealand were the glowworms at Waitomo. It’s about a two and a half hour drive from Auckland and way back in 2018 when my Mom and I were originally planning this trip Down Under, we were going to rent a car and drive around New Zealand ourselves…on the left side of the road.

Well that was 6 years ago and since then, I’ve become a little less adventurous in the driving side of things and also bougier in general. So when we were re-planning this trip for 2023, we started talking about alternate ways we could see these worms!

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Booking

In a surprise to no one who has been reading about my Down Under adventures, my Mom and I decided to book a tour from Viator, which is our go-to tour portal for their fantastic 24 hour free cancellation policy.

We paid $318.15 USD per person for the Waitomo Glowworm & Ruakuri Twin Cave Experience with the company Experience Kart. The tour is 10 hours long and includes pick up from your accommodations, transportation in a van with wifi, snacks, and an amazing guide and obviously entrance to the caves.

If you want to just enter the caves, they cost $75 NZD/44.25 USD for Waitomo (where photography is not allowed) and $107 NZD/63.14 USD for Ruakuri (where photography is allowed). Obviously these fees were already included in our tour price.

So for an extra $210.76 USD, I received all the amenities above and didn’t have to rent a car or risk everyone’s life driving on the other side of the road. Wins all around!

Pick Up

The day of our tour arrived and we woke up bright and early to meet our tour guide. And he rolled up right on time at 6:15am. His name was Karthik and he was an absolutely phenomenal tour guide from the very start. Once we were situated in our van for the day, we were told that the van has Wifi and we were given cute gift bags with yummy local snacks, tissues, soda and a bottle of water. Above and beyond 🙂 .

My Mom and I also got lucky because there was only one other person on our tour that day. The van only has maybe 10 seats for passengers, so any tour group would be relatively small, but this was almost private. Love it 🙂 .

And then we were quickly off on our adventure. Karthik had on a headset, which was great even for the small van because we could clearly hear everything he said while facing forward to watch the road (which I appreciate 🙂 ). He then asked us about our interests and told us fun facts about New Zealand based on our interests – cool! Another way this felt like a personal tour.

The Drive

It was a 2.5 hour drive to the caves and we watched the heavy morning traffic head towards the city as we drove out of it. As we looked at the gorgeous scenery, (including adorable baby lambs, lush green hills and even a full rainbow) Karthik gave us recommendations and told us fun facts through his headset, such as:

• Glowworms aren’t actually worms, but cannibal maggots that mostly eat each other in these caves. Adult glowworms only live for 3 days in which they starve to death because once they reach “maturity,” they no longer have a mouth or digestive track…the horror behind these beautiful sights. Also, those strings hanging down are used to catch prey and are made mostly of urine…yum?
• There are 300 caves in the Waitomo region and Waitomo is a small one. Maori own 80% of the caves.
• According to our guide, New Zealand experiences about 20,000 earthquakes a year, but most are too small to be felt. These earthquakes and the many hills of NZ are apparently because of all the volcanic activity (it’s part of the Ring Of Fire) and because NZ lies across a tectonic plate
• Lake Taupo, a lake near these caves, is the size of Singapore and is in the location of the largest volcano in NZ and it’s due for an eruption
• There is nothing deadly in New Zealand and apparently they have no predators, which is an interesting contrast to their close neighbor Australia where everything seems to be trying to kill you 🙂
• The native Kiwi bird sleeps 18 hours a day…now that’s what I’m talking about 😉
• Piha Beach, which is close to Auckland, is an iron rich black sand beach (and because of this comment we actually visited!)

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I was going to go to sleep during this drive since we had to get up so early, but we were learning so many cool things I stayed awake the whole time 🙂 .

Coffee Break

At 7:45am we stopped at a coffee shop named Robert Harris for a 20 minute break. A few people went to the bathroom and I got a coffee, which was delicious. It was a great space with kind staff and a clean bathroom. Would recommend 🙂 .

Waitomo Cave

At 9:30am we arrived at Waitomo Cave! Karthik checked us in, told us where to meet him after the tour and then we walked up to the entrance. There was another group going in that wasn’t full and we were asked if we wanted to head in early.

We said yes and joined the other group, which only had 6 people in it. In total there were less than 10 of us and apparently the tour has a max of 23 people at once.

We then walked into the caves. It was dark, but had handrails. Immediately we were faced with massive Stalactites (which grow down from the ceiling) and Stalagmites (which grow from the floor). Our new tour guide then told us that it takes over 100 years for a stalactite or stalagmite to grow 1 centimeter. So some of these took 13 MILLION YEARS to grow this big. WOAH!!!

We were also understandably told not to touch anything because the oil on our hands stops stalactite and stalagmite growth. We then walked down some more stairs into an area called the Cathedral.

Our tour guide asked if anyone wanted to sing a song because the cave room has great acoustics. Since that’s my social anxiety nightmare, we declined and the guide started singing a beautiful Maori song while we listened in the dark. It was lovely.

Then we headed back in the direction we came and went down some stairs to a boat. No one else was in the cave besides one tour group, so it was eerie, but cool. We then loaded up the boat from back to front, and once we were all settled, the guide stood on the front of the boat and guided it through the water by grabbing onto a rope across the ceiling.

We floated along in the boat in the dark while looking at the glowworms that adorned the ceiling and walls. It was beautiful, but in mere seconds we were outside in the light once again and the tour was over. That was fast 🙂 .

Once we were near the light outside, we were allowed to take pictures. Then we arrived at the dock and got out of the boat.

We walked up a path and stairs back to the entrance area. They had bathrooms and a gift shop. After walking through that, we met Karthik next to our van, which we got to by going under a bridge after the gift shop and up the stairs to the left.

Then we piled into the van and drove the whole 3 minutes to the next cave 🙂 . The whole tour was about 45 minutes long and ended at 10:25 with a small percentage of that time being on the boat looking at glowworms.

As we left, I realized that if we had done our original plan of only visiting this cave, it wouldn’t really be worth it to drive 5 hours total for a 45 minute tour, only a few minutes of which showed the titular glowworms.

Ruakuri Cave

Then we arrived at Ruakuri Cave and this experience blew Waitomo out of the water. Shoutout to our amazing tour guide Elana!

There were only two other people on our tour, which happened from 11am to 12:30pm. Elana checked us in and then warned us that the bathroom near the check in desk was the last until the tour is over. We were also given the wifi password, which was “Rai cave.”

After everyone was ready, we were led by the tour guide across the street and into the cave.

There are 8 entrances to Ruakuri Cave, but most are in water or require repelling into it. The cave is made of 25-35 million year old limestone and since it was under the sea, you can see fossilized shells in the walls!

We then entered the cave and it was understandably dark. We went down beautiful and creepy 🙂 spiral stairs and headed deep into the earth to the cave entrance.

Ruakuri Cave is 4.5km long and our guided walk explored 1.5km of it. During our 90 minutes in the cave, we saw people quietly in the distance twice, but were mostly in the dark with these glowworms and it was STUNNING!!

We saw glowworms during most of the cave walk and way more of them than during our time in Waitomo. There were also even more impressive stalactites, stalagmites and cave structures. I wanted to do this tour to see glowworms, but by the end, I was even more impressed with the gorgeous caves.

Elana told us cool fun facts throughout the whole tour and answered any questions we had. She was very knowledgable and the entire experience felt a bit like meditation with us walking through the empty, cool and dark caverns that were built slowly over millions of years while the blue light of glowworms shined down on us.

Drive

After that lovely experience, we re-entered the sunlight and walked back to our van. We hit the road and a little before 1pm, we arrived at a restaurant in case people were hungry. I was only a little peckish so I ate some of the lovely snacks we were given.

After everyone was full and our tour companion had eaten at the restaurant, we got back onto the road at 1:20pm. During the drive, the early pick up time caught up with me and I fell asleep. I awakened at 3pm when we stopped for a bathroom break.

Then around 4:30pm we were dropped off back at our Airbnb ready to reminisce on this wild experience.

Travel Tips

In case you want to take a tour similar to this, I’d suggest wearing something you don’t mind getting wet because you will be dripped on from the caves. For similar reasons, I would recommend wearing shoes with a good grip since the floor can be slippery. The caves also understandably require you to duck down a few times to avoid stalags.

Conclusion

And that was my experience seeing glowworms in New Zealand! However, I would recommend going to at least Waitomo and Ruakuri caves instead of just Waitomo. Waitomo has more glowworms in a concentrated area, but seeing them is over quite quickly in a boat.

However, in Ruakuri, you get to see them up close and also explore over a kilometer of a gorgeous cave filled with giant stalactites. I came for the glowworms, but would return for the caves! They’re massive, gorgeous and have fascinating history.

What’s your favorite natural wonder?