On Easter Monday, still a holiday here, we drove from Auckland to Te Kuiti, a small town near the Waitomo Glow Worm Caves. We were booked into a motor hotel that we at first thought might be another Bates Hotel! It was very run down and we were the only guests until late evening 😳. It was a short drive from the main drag and of course the motel restaurant was closed because it was a holiday. The hotel manager suggested picking up something from the supermarket as probably the few other restaurants in town would also be closed. We had what we’d call an efficiency room, with a mini fridge, microwave, hot plate and a few dishes. Our microwave dinner tasted fine washed down with some wine.
We were booked for the 9:20am tour of the glow worm caves in Waitomo. The caves were worth the drive from Auckland and staying in the throwback in time motel. The Maori discovered a river entrance to the caves in the late 1800s, that is now the tourist exit. The upper entrance was discovered sometime later and is now the tourist entrance. We were guided through the quite dark cave down to river level where we boarded small boats for the part of the cave that had the largest number of the glow worms – it was like hundreds of very small lights going on and off the in the dark. Bob surmised that the “glow worms” were really just LEDs to humour the tourists.
