We started our New Zealand’s North Island road trip at Pureora forest park. We camped in Ngaherenga campsite (6$ pp/night). Our idea was to go biking along Timber trail next morning, but it went south (literally), as the closest bike rental was 80km away. So we did a short walk to forest tower and headed to Waitomo.

Waitomo (waterhole in Maori) is an interesting area since it had loads of limestone formations and heaps of caves, most of which have at least some glowworms. You can’t wander off to caves by yourself, but there were tons of tours from quick glance at the glowworms to 100m abseiling and black water rafting. Overwhelmed by the amount of options, we ended up with a 3h tour that visited two caves – a wet cave with glowworms and a dry cave with a moa fossil (really big ostrich). The wet cave was called Spellbound and you can actually see it in the Caves episode of BBC’s Planet Earth. There we would hop on a boat, turn off our lights and set back to watch thousands of glowworms shining on top of us. The longer we spent there the more we saw, a real starry night in the middle of the day!

Next we went to see a dry cave. On the way our guide was telling about ‘tomos’ (sinkholes) in the area. The underground cave system is so vast in around Waitomo so every now and then a cow gets missing and after a while is usually found in one of these tomos. The dry cave was not as impressive as the wet one, but it was nice to have the guide around to explain everything and tell stories. In the cave there was also fossilised bones of a extinct moa.

The guide also told us a local secret – there are also some free glowworms to see in the area. There is a little loop called Ruakuri bushwalk, which we did before going to the tour. A really nice piece of lush rainforest with cool limestone formations and tunnels. But it is also worth visiting at night as it lights up with glowworms. So we went there the second time in the evening and got to experience a real enchanted forest with twinkling stars everywhere (also in the sky).

We spent the night at Juno Hall Backpackers’ tentsite, using all the facilities of the hostel but sleeping in our tent, pretty convenient. The next day we headed to New Plymouth. We decided to take the scenic route to check out some sights and enjoy King Country, where Hobbiton also can be found.

Our first stop was Mangapohue natural bridge. It was a short 10 minutes walk to a stunning ex-cave that had collapsed leaving only a little piece of the ceiling. The second stop was Piripiri cave that, despite its name, did nothing to impress us. 

After we drove to Marokopa falls. Another 15 minutes of walk and we could see and feel a nice big waterfall (along with a little bit of rain). 

After the waterfall we continued our scenic (and very curvy) drive towards the west coast. The road indeed was interesting and something you’d expect of New Zealand, including a roadblock caused hundreds of sheep (top picture). Closer to New Plymouth we took a detour to go through Waikawau beach tunnel. Since the weather was not so great we had the ocean and the beach all to ourselves, a really nice place with volcanic black sand.