June 19, 2017 – Franz Joseph Glacier

Since I crashed last night around 7:30, I’m awake this morning by five!  I’m too stubborn to get up for forty-five minutes, of course.  But that still gives me time to stretch and stuff before Marilyn awakens.  I’ve noticed that if I don’t stretch I really regret it, so I won’t be making that mistake again.  It’s just that when you don’t have any floor space it’s a little tricky!

Last night we planned our day and decided that we could have a down morning and still see everything we wanted to.  That’s good, since it’s raining when we get up.  We’ll see how the day progresses.  Marilyn turns on our flat-screen TV in search of some news or weather.  There is a Maori channel!  It’s all in the Maori language.  How cool is that! The America’s Cup is big news, especially since New Zealand is dominating America, 3 to 0 at this point.  The New Zealand news people aren’t like ours at home.  They are much more casual, and funny!  Much like their countrymen.  We haven’t worn any make up or been particularly concerned about our hair, since no one else is.  Most activities are outdoors and relaxed.

The last oatmeal for breakfast with coffee and hot chocolate starts our day off and we’re off to see the glaciers, rain or shine!  We stop first at Fox Glacier, which, predictably enough, is only a few minutes’ drive!  There are several walks of varying lengths and intensities and we opt for the “thirty minute return”, which we’ve decided means round trip.  That’s the perfect length of time and rise in elevation.  Miraculously the rain has quit and we are treated to the perfect view of the glacier, framed with vegetation and even a bit of blue sky.  While we’re there a group from Japan and Singapore join us and one of the young women offers to take our picture with Marilyn’s phone.  Marilyn mentions that I’ve been to Asia and asks me where I’ve been; when I say Japan the gentleman responds with, “Singapore very small”.  We assure him that the people are wonderful and that’s what counts. 

Back down the path and to our car as it begins to drizzle lightly again.  It is about a half hour drive to the Franz Joseph Glacier and sixteen kilometers of it is hairpin turns.  The good news is that, once again, we barely see another car!  Early winter is great here!  We’ve got the one-way bridges down pat.  If the sign is square with a large white arrow on the left and a black one on the right, we have the right (left?) of way.  If the sign is round with a small black arrow on the left and large red one on the right, we have to stop and wait for the on-coming traffic, if there is any! 

There is a small town here!  There is a choice of cafes and three shops and the West Coast Wildlife Center – but the big draw is the glacier.  Again, there are many choices of ways to see it, even a helicopter that will set you down on the glacier.  Since we touched a glacier in Alaska we don’t see that this one will feel much different!  We sure do want to see it, though!  We choose a path, park and put on our ponchos as it is beginning to drizzle again.  A few steps along and the drizzle quits and we are protected by the rain gods once again!  We climb and shoot and head back to the car as the drizzle picks up again!  Obviously it’s time to shop!

Marilyn wants to check out a pair of earrings but there isn’t a mirror handy, so she uses her phone, as you do!  She decides against the earrings and we move on to a second shop, then to lunch at the Snake Bite Brewery.  It’s an Asian fusion/New Zealand kind of place and I have simply delicious chicken pad thai!  Marilyn has the fish and chips and while we’re waiting for our order we are joined by an American woman we had seen on the glacier!  She tells us a LOT about her travels with her husband and their twenty-year old son.  He’s gotten a job at one of the remote ranger stations for the winter.

While we’re eating, Marilyn discovers that she doesn’t have her phone.  Surely it’s in the car.  Our American buddy comes back to the table to tell us that there is a rainbow over Franz Joseph.  Since I never go anywhere without the camera, I fun outside to capture it.  Marilyn stays at the table since she doesn’t have her camera or phone and turned me down when I offered to go back to the car for it.  It’s only across the street and it isn’t raining.

When we finish lunch (?) We go to the car to look for her phone before our back-stage tour of the kiwis as the windlife center.  I’ve brought home half of my enormous serving of pad thai and want to deposit it, anyway.

Well.  We’ve turned the car and it’s contents inside out and upside down.  We’re pretty sure Marilyn got her phone back from the girl on the glaciers and have no other ideas.  You’ve probably guessed that it was in the store with the earrings.  Another customer found it lying on a shelf and the store owner brought it to the police station.  We walk the couple of blocks to the station and after a bit of QandA the brand new phone – which isn’t even paid for yet – is back safe and sound.

The policeman asked what color it was, and what the picture was on the screen.  Marilyn has two different pictures and described both;  but the clincher was when she gave him the passcode to open it.  He was very polite and said it happens quite a bit.  We are so impressed with the honesty of the Kiwis!  We say one man get out of his car, leave it running, and go into a shop!  Amazing! 

Our tour is booked for 4:30 but we arrive early.  That’s good since it’s been moved up to 4:00.  We’re the only people on it, though, so it’s not a big deal  Usually there are eggs and chicks to see, along with the half-hour lecture and video;  but it’s just past “chick season”, so we have the option of just seeing the nocturnal room.  We opt to go forward anyway and are very pleased with our decision.  Nikki is our guide.  She’s originally from South Africa but moved to the north island seventeen years ago.  She deoesn’t have the strong Kiwi accent and we can understand every word!

She was only 16 when she was struck by a car.  They can live to be 60-80!

This fluffy chick was only one day old!  Look how huge!

Poor mama!!

 She shares a wealth of information of her favorite birds and how their populations are dwindling.  We get to hold a kiwi egg, which is enormous and takes up most of the mother’s body!  There’s an x-ray that shows how all her organs are squished together to make room for that blue monster!  Once she lays her egg, she’s done and the dady incubates for around eighty days!

Kiwis are much like mammals, in that their feathers are more like fur and they don’t have hollow bones, since they only have vestigal wings.  They live on the egg sac for a week or so and since it is so large, the chicks have a difficult time standing and balancing when they are hatched.  They are fully fledged when they emerge from their eggs and within a few days are starting to peck around with those long bills for insects and berries.  Their nostrils are at the very end of their beaks and they also have a separate organ right at the tip that senses vibration.  They need their sense of smell and vibration to locate food since their vision isn’t very gool.

She also showed us how thick and strong their legs are, taking up nearly half of their body weight!  They are scaly like reptiles and use their three claws and dew claw for defense.  We got to hold a stuffed animal that weighed as much as an actual full-gown Rowi Kiwi and it’s like holding a small watermelon!  I would never have guessed they were that heavy!  We even got to hear the difference between the male and females’ calls.  The male is much higher pitched, so that it will carry over his large territory.

After the lecture and video we got to see the incubators where they have automatic machines that turn the eggs a quarter turn every four hours, twice in one directions and then back in the other. Then we saw the boxes in which the chicks are kept until they are large enough to be sent up to Willowback for continue growing until they can be released on a predator-free island.  The islands aren’t completely predator free because the evil stoats have learned how to swim seven kilometers to get to them!  They’ve also learned how to avoid the traps. 

Each chick is fitted with a microchip and a transmitter, so that when they are fully-enough grown they can be collected from the islands and returned to the forest from which their eggs were collected.

It costs ten thousand dollars to bring a chick from egg to release!  The government doesn’t finance any of this effort, except that the wildlife centers work very closely with the Department of Conservation (called DOC, like the word, not the letters) in their efforts.

Our last educational stop is the nocturnal room to visit the last two chicks at the center.  They are Dawn and Dusk and after letting our eyes adjust we are able to see them both!  At one point Dusk happens upon Dawn and they startle each other, taking off in opposite directions!

We’ve stayed past closing and past sundown!  Marilyn has to drive back along those hairpin turns in the dark and it has started raining again.  When we get home we decide to park on the street instead of trying to negotiate the bizarre parking lot.  The only draw-back is that it is finally showing us what a real rain looks like.  Yay for ponchos!  You can carry a lot of stuff under there and keep it dry!

We’ve had another long day and Marilyn doesn’t even want dinner.  I finish my left overs and argue with the internet for a bit before giving up.  I was able to check my mail at lunch, so I know there’s nothing going on that I need to know;  but it sure is frustrating not to be able to post.  Oh well.  Our ponchos are hanging in the shower and all is well with the world.  Off to sleep at 7:30!  Having the sun go down so early forces us to come home early.  That lets us get the day started early so we don’t waste any day light!