Fox and kiwis

Long (for the kids) hike up to the Fox glacier today. It's a nice little walk up from the car park, next to the glacial valley. The river wasn't very full but there were a few waterfalls here and there. You could see some blocks of ice already at the start of the walk. It was pretty overcast and it drizzled a bit every now and again, par for the course I think. The path took you just 200m from the front of the glacier. Then the weather got a bit worse and we were pretty drenched by the time we got back to the camper.

In the afternoon we headed for the home of the next glacier, Franz Joseph, about 25 kilometres up the road. There they had a kiwi breeding centre where you could see real kiwis. There were only two, in a darkened room (kiwis are nocturnal) with low red lighting. They are much bigger than I thought, about the size of a football (I guess I thought they wouldn't be much bigger than the fruit). The rest was taken up by an exhibition about glaciers, with a bit of kiwi environment thrown in. All in all quite expensive, but it was our only real chance of seeing them.