New Zealand Road Trip: Waipu Caves
Camping at Coca Cola Lake and visiting the Waipu glowworm caves on our New Zealand north island road trip.
After we left Spirits Bay, we experienced our first dump station visit. This was my first time staying in a van, so it was a new adventure for me. I thought a dump station would be a bigger, bathroom-type room, but it’s basically just a hole with a water spout nearby. Unloading the grey water and refilling the fresh water were fairly easy—it just took some adjusting to park the van in the right spot for the hoses to reach. And I won’t go into details, but after our first cleaning of the van’s cassette toilet, we decided to only use it in case of serious emergencies! Most of the campgrounds had their own bathrooms anyway, so that plan worked out well.
Onward! That night was another one where we arrived in the dark and didn’t see the view until the next morning. I knew from Google Maps that we parked on the side of Coca Cola lake (Rotopokaka) and that there was a beach nearby. This is the beauty we woke up to in the morning:
The beach wasn’t far away, either. I walked up a sandy hill and came upon this view on the other side:
Wow! What a perfect place to camp for the night. I was hoping for some waves, but there weren’t any, so after my walk we continued on our driving journey.
New Zealand is known for having glow worm caves, and a lot of people go to the Waitomo Caves which are bigger and offer black water rafting. We wanted a less crowded and more relaxed glow worm experience, so we decided to check out the smaller Waipu Caves Scenic Reserve. It was only a short walk from the parking lot until we found this entry to the cave:
We were glad to have our headlamps as we waded in the dark through some ankle-deep water.
I didn’t see any glow worms, and I was actually going to keep walking into knee-deep water when Bryan stopped me and told me to turn off my head lamp. There were glow worms everywhere! As soon as I looked up, I could see hundreds of them on the cave walls above us like a starry night sky.
My iPhone 14 didn’t do it justice, but you get the idea:
Overall, I’m glad we stopped at the caves. The whole Waitomo black water rafting is probably more of an experience if you’re looking for a half-day/full-day experience, but Waipu was an impressive little stop on our road trip.