We headed away to Franz Joseph early the next morning, but the closer we got, the wetter the weather became and it was clear there would be no flights today. Regardless, we called in to their office only to have this confirmed, and they were unsure about whether flights would resume the next day, so we got our money back from that and went and had a very expensive coffee instead ($60 for 2 coffees and a small breakfast each).
We decided to go through the Kiwi and Tuatara exhibit though. In this exhibit they have the endangered Roho Kiwis, and there were 2 of them fossicking around in the darkness. There were no glass walls in this enclosure and one of the kiwis was so close we could have reached down and touched it – very special. We could have stayed in there for as long as we liked (and come back the next day) but after we watched them for 30 minutes or so we moved on through the rest of the exhibit. There was lots of information about glaciers, and finally, an enclosure, glassed off this time, with several tuatara in it.
The weather was still wet , and it was only about 2pm by this stage so we decided to continue on to Haast. We booked into a campground there for the night mainly so we could get our washing done. We were really glad though because the rain overnight was torrential. We felt quite secure where we were and by the time we woke in the morning it had all blown over, and we set off to resume our travels.
Away From Home NZ 