Monday, August 24, 2009

There had to be one bad day


I am just recovering from yesterday - not the best day of our trip.

Many many years ago - Peter worked as a guide at the Waitomo Caves as well as at the Caves Hotel so we thought it only right that we went to have a look. It took 7 hours to drive from Wellington so we were pleased to finally arrive at dusk.

The Hotel looked amazing from the outside - a real relic of a past era but all that came to a halt the minute we entered. It was run down, dingy and very depressing as it appeared we were the only guests. Some more appeared later but did nothing to improve the ambience. We decided very quickly that one night would be more than enough and cancelled the second night.
I spent all the time there humming Hotel California and lay awake most of the night thinking about ghosts and weirdos running through the ancient hallways.

The caves today, on the other hand, were great and I really enjoyed our tour of Ruakuri Cave with only another family of four.
The guide was interesting and friendly and was much better value than the glow worm cave with another 30 tourists and an extremely bored and boring and patronising guide.

These are the glow worm threads that catch the bugs that they eat. They are actually not worms but maggots of the fly but glow maggots does not sound very enticing dies it?

Oh well - another thing to tick off the list. Now the joys of Rotorua are ahead and already showing much more promise.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Enjoying reading these travel posts - I shall be going to rotorua so lots of details please!

Brenda said...

The facade does look marvellous

Chriss said...

Hi Lisa, You really are hitting all the tourist spots. I too loved my visit to the Ruakuri Caves, and have been several times. I have taken many an Australian visitor there! The Waitomo caves were very good many years ago but sadly, it has all fallen by the wayside. The Hotel looks amazing and could be a huge brilliant business, but the apathy is sad. I understand the stains of Hotel California wafting eerily thru the darkness......

Mary-anne said...

I'll add a "me too" here. We also stayed at that hotel for one night - and were also disappointed. It seems to be the only place to stay which is better than a backpackers - maybe there's a business opportunity waiting.....