Waitomo and The Lost World

Waitomo, on the north island of New Zealand, pretty much looks like any other area of countryside in New Zealand, except for the limestone formations and underground cave and stream systems that are found throughout this area. In fact, there are more than 300 mapped cave systems here!

Waitomo Adventures has many options for exploring these cave systems – you can walk, swim, abseil (repel), tube, or raft through a few different areas. We chose to combine a few of these options and make a full day of it. Please note that all of the following photos were taken by our guides at Waitomo Adventures.

The Lost World Cave system is accessed by descending into a giant hole in the ground; the bottom of the cave is 100 meters or 300 feet down! We free abseiled down into this beautiful cave. Rion has done some climbing, but I had never done anything like this before. Looking 300 feet straight down, I thought I was going to be freaked, but I loved it.


Behind us is the hole that we descended through. It would be 4 hours and 2.5 km before we would see daylight again.


Our way out included walking, wading, swimming, jumping into the river from 10 foot ledges, and rock climbing. Rion attempted some of the more difficult free climbing, while I was too chicken!


They did manage to coerce me into some more of the tighter spaces, however! We had to belly crawl under this rock for about 10 feet – doesn’t seem like such a big deal, but I was a bit nervous about getting stuck under there!!! Especially if there were cave spiders……. I might add here that a cave spider did manage to find its’ way onto my helmet at some point and hitch a little ride. Luckily, Rion saw it and removed it before telling me about it. Who knows how long he’d been there!!