Roads remained closed the next morning. I was worried we would be stranded in Ohakune without a place to stay for the night. Cleaned up the bach and met the property manager when checking out. I asked her if the bach was available tonight in case we couldn’t get out, her reply made me sound like my worries were unwarranted; she said if you can’t get out they can’t come in too. Ya huh. There was already a long line of vehicles waiting for the roads to open. It was a relief when we could finally move at around 10.30-11am. The plan was to have lunch at Cambridge but due to a late start we were only at Taumarunui by lunch time so we stopped there and had Thai food. Happened to pass by an alpaca farm and drove up to check it out.




The gates were open and there wasn’t any entrance fee. My aunt was very excited as she was hoping to see one and there were lots of them. They seemed curious and came near the fence but moved away when we reached out for a pat. It was time to move on as the plan was to visit Waitomo Caves and there is another hour’s drive to Hamilton where we will be staying tonight.




There were lots of people at Waitomo. Rui & I didn’t want to go in when we saw the price and we weren’t fond of commercial tours anyway. My sis paid for us and got the basic tour tickets. We followed a guide through the caves and were asked if anyone wants to sing, no one did. We hopped on a boat into complete darkness and silence and it looked like the “sky” above was lit up by a massive patch of white blue spots. After around 15 mins or so we came out to light and all of us felt it was overrated and not worth the $50 pp lol.




There was still some time before it got dark so we tried a 25 min return walk to a lookout point along the Waitomo walkway. It was an easy and short walk up the hill to views of open farm land.