Waikato's Lake District Adventures reopen doors to tourists

The Glow Worm tour is a popular choice for tourists who visit Lake District Adventures. Photo / Supplied

Nestled off State Highway 1, hidden away behind the buzz of traffic at the Piarere intersection sits one of the Waikato's most mesmerising tourism attractions – Lake District Adventures.

Sally Hastie started out providing private tours for her family and friends, showing them the hidden beauty of the Waikato River and its neighbouring streams, it was during one of these tours that she and her husband Steve Hastie decided to open up their secret to the world and provide tour rides of hidden glow worm retreats, a submerged power station and provide history of an area largely untouched by the bustle of the city.

"We have been operating this business for 7 years now, it all started with my parents living on the lake and we took family and friends on kayak tours ourselves before we had a business and after that we just wanted to share what was on our doorstep with New Zealand and beyond," Sally said.

"We are pretty unique in the way we only do small tours and we do not go into caves and a lot of people struggle going into caves with glow worms so that is an advantage for us, we are only doing one tour a day so it is a pretty special experience and we are not trying to pump our groups through."

"I think our most special point is that we are family owned and it is generally either myself, my husband or my father Mike Paget who takes the tours, so you get to meet us and we take you out and it is just something special."

Along with glow worm tours, Lake District Adventures also offers a mountain bike tour down one of the Waikato River cycleways that links to the Arapuni Swing bridge.

"We are not a big commercial business, it's our family just offering tours, when people come along to our tours there are generally three under four boys running around welcoming them as we try to teach them how to kayak."

Sally said the impact of Covid-19 was tough on the business, as the business had to offer refunds to all international booked customers, while losing revenue in March and April.

Lake Districts Adventures is a ran by Steve and Sally Hastie. Photo / Supplied

"With alert level 2 we have been able to operate again but we have had to limit numbers on our shuttle buses due to the physical distancing rules and only having the maximum number of 10 in a group.

"To operate in level 2 we also got people to call us ahead of time so we did not have large groups sitting around waiting for the tour to start as well."

Sally said it was exciting that other tourism providers were offering good deals for Kiwis to explore New Zealand, saying that she hopes to see some of the people taking advantage of cheap motorhome rental prices head their way.

"With those sorts of deals and deals on accommodation it is making it more accessible to a lot more people and we are getting a lot of Kiwis that haven't travelled around New Zealand now saying oh look at what is on our own doorstep."

Sally hopes that, once it is safe to do so, the Trans-Tasman bubble between Australia and New Zealand does take off as it will help the local tourism providers get back on their feet quickly, opening their market up to Australians who want to explore their trans-Tasman neighbour.