The Waikato has two attractions that everybody knows about and a long tail that almost nobody does. That tail is the reason people who spend a week here leave surprised.
This is our list, put together from driving the region every week. It skips the obvious two, which you will do anyway, and concentrates on the things that are genuinely hard to find elsewhere.
Get up into a rainforest canopy
Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari is the largest predator free fenced sanctuary in New Zealand: an entire extinct volcano ringed by 47 kilometres of pest proof fence, with the introduced predators removed from inside.
The result is a forest that sounds the way New Zealand forest used to sound, which is startlingly loud. There is an 18 metre tower that takes you up into the canopy, and guided ancient forest walks if you want somebody to explain what you are hearing.
See water that took a century to arrive
The Te Waihou Blue Spring near Putaruru produces some of the purest water in the world, filtered through the Mamaku Plateau for fifty to a hundred years before it surfaces. It is a short flat walk from the Leslie Road car park and the clarity is genuinely hard to believe in person.
Soak in a hot spring behind an 1889 pub
Okoroire Hot Springs, between Tirau and Matamata, is a set of natural stone lined thermal pools in the bush behind a heritage country hotel. No queues, no water slides, no marketing. It is what Rotorua was before Rotorua was Rotorua.
Stand under a 55 metre waterfall
Bridal Veil Falls, or Wairēinga, drops 55 metres over a basalt cliff into the Pakoka River south of Raglan. Ten minutes on the flat gets you to the top platform and a staircase takes you to the base, where the scale of it lands properly.
Walk under a limestone arch
The Mangapohue Natural Bridge west of Waitomo is a limestone arch left standing when a cave system collapsed, with a boardwalk running underneath it. Twenty minutes, and unlike almost anything at Waitomo you will probably have it to yourself.
The rest of the list
- Marokopa Falls, a wide curtain waterfall minutes off the Marokopa Road
- The Otorohanga Kiwi House, where nocturnal enclosures mean you actually see kiwi awake
- Ngarunui Beach at Raglan, black volcanic sand and a serious west coast swell
- Manu Bay, the long left hand point break that put Raglan on the world surfing map
- Te Toto Gorge lookout on the Karioi coast road, the best sunset view in the region
- Mount Pirongia's forest walks through Rimu, Kahikatea and Totara to a mountain stream
- Tirau, an entire town's worth of corrugated iron sculpture, which has to be seen
- The Hamilton Gardens, a series of fully realised historical garden styles rather than a park
- Mount Kakepuku, a near perfect extinct volcanic cone rising straight out of the Waipa farmland
- The Waipa Valley ridge road between Otorohanga and Te Kuiti, panoramic and almost empty
How to fit it together
These cluster geographically, which makes planning easier than the list suggests. West of Hamilton gives you Pirongia, Bridal Veil Falls and Raglan in one run. South gives you Otorohanga, Waitomo, the natural bridge and Marokopa. East gives you Maungatautari, the Blue Spring, Okoroire and Hobbiton.
Each of those is comfortably a half day, and each is one of our tours. The eastern run, at $695 for a half day with lunch, covers three of the items on this list in a single afternoon.
- West: Pirongia, Bridal Veil Falls, Raglan
- South: Otorohanga Kiwi House, Waitomo, Mangapohue, Marokopa
- East: Maungatautari, Blue Spring, Okoroire, Hobbiton
A note on driving
Most of the good stuff here is at the end of a rural road, and a fair amount of it is at the end of a winding rural road with no centre line. That is part of the charm and it is also the main reason overseas visitors cut their list short.
If you would rather look out the window than at the gravel, that is the entire premise of what we do. Chauffeur driven, in a classic car, at a pace that lets you stop when something is worth stopping for.
