{"id":186,"date":"2011-12-21T17:18:01","date_gmt":"2011-12-21T10:18:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hauwitohuang.com\/?p=186"},"modified":"2025-06-08T10:13:33","modified_gmt":"2025-06-08T03:13:33","slug":"waitomo-rotorua","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hauwitohuang.com\/?p=186","title":{"rendered":"Waitomo & Rotorua"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Waitomo Glow Worm Caves & Ruakuri Caves<\/h2>\n

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Today from Auckland we are going to Waitomo (195km) to see Glow Worm Caves. This tiny creature radiate luminescent light thru his body in the darkness. This caves where its natural habitat well keep control that is prohibited or no light during our journey inside including camera flash to maintain the ecosystem. The area lighting is very dim, only a small section that is well lighting. Our journey inside the caves is with a boat.<\/p>\n

You can read the history of this place in this Link<\/a><\/p>\n

Once we finish from Glow Worm Caves we straight heading to Ruakuri Cave with its limestone formation, folk story (Maori legend) said that this place was first discovered 400-500 years ago by a young Maori hunting for birds. He was attacked by wild dogs just outside the original cave entrance. So it’s named Ruakuri in Maori which is meaning \u2018rua\u2019 is den, and \u2018kuri\u2019 is dog.<\/p>\n

Here is a bunch of picture we taken during there, off course mostly is outside the area of Glow Worm Cave and Ruakuri Caves since we can’t take photograph in there.<\/p>\n

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From Waitomo we heading to Rotorua (156km)<\/h2>\n

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This is the city on the southern shores of the lake of the same name, in the Bay of Plenty area of the North Island of New Zealand filled with fascinating Maori culture, hot springs and mud pools.<\/p>\n

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Mitai Cultural Experience<\/h2>\n

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In the Evening we take a Mitai Cultural Experience, a traditional dance performance by Maori People. Very interesting performance, the dance is very unique with their face mimic and body moves like some kind threatening someone or something. Then after that we been taken to the forest with river to see some local doing canoe and also see Fairy Pond. Lastly we have a buffet serve with a local traditional food, very tasteful and yummy.<\/p>\n

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Trip Map:<\/h2>\n