Rain Rain Go Away

Turns out, there isn’t much to do on the West Coast when it is raining buckets. We checked out a Wildlife Center where they have 3 Rowi Kiwi birds on display. Seeing a kiwi (the other major New Zealand symbol, in addition to the fern, and the source of why New Zealanders are called kiwis – not the fruit :-)) was neat, although we’ve gotten spoiled by finding things in the wild, this would have to do. No flash - it freaks out the birds, so no pictures of the real kiwis. There are only 375 Rowi Kiwi’s in the world, all on the West Coast of New Zealand. In the wild, 95 percent of eggs do not survive, so conservationists take the eggs when they are laid and allow them to hatch and the chicks to grow for 18 months in captivity before releasing them into the wild. In this way, 95 percent (coincidentally?) survive. Kiwi chicks are completely self sufficient after exiting the egg – sort of like our kids – NOT (the three of them just discovered this “cute” turn of phrase and are using it liberally – although Charlie and Molly feel the need to make sure that you heard the “not” and explain what they really meant). O.k., so reading all of that and playing in their fake glacier took about 30 minutes.

Now, off to the Franz Joseph Glacier hike after eating peanut butter and jelly/bread and cheese sandwiches in the car. That hike lasted less than 30 minutes in the pouring rain. Our ever insightful and typically rosy Molly summed it up, “Whose idea was this anyway?!”

How about an afternoon of Legos in the motel room and an early dinner instead? We ate out at one of the two open cafes in town and lamented that getting bread for the table costs extra in this neck of the woods, but it took the edge of the hunger we worked up drying ourselves off all day.