I woke up this morning (after finally falling asleep at 1am) and thought two things: 1. It is raining; 2. How soon can we get out of this room?

Luckily, Claire thought the same about the room and told me to pack my things quickly before she climbed out off the top bunk and left to find us a new room.

All of our hostels until now have been brilliant but this one was a complete nightmare. It was so busy and loud and the people weren't friendly at all.

Claire returned 5 minutes later having upgraded us to the ajoining motel at a discounted rate thanks to the very nice man on reception. We moved our stuff to the new room straight away. Nice bed, ensuite, kitchenette and best of all, our own front door. We are not staying in any more rooms with bunk beds!!

Next we confronted our old foe the weather. It was pouring with rain and very misty, so not much chance of going up in the helicopter. We drove over to Fox anyway and found the heli-tour was cancelled. Instead we booked onto the day hike leaving at 10.10. This gave us enough time to book our accommodation for the next couple of nights. At 10.10, our guide, Scott, came to get us and kitted us out. We were the only two on the tour which was fab. We finished our briefing and were ready to leave when message came that all tours were cancelled due to the bad weather. The rain was torrential so this wasn't a surprise but disappointing anyway. The forecast for tomorrow is good so we have rescheduled for a half day hike in the morning as the helicopter is fully booked. Fingers crosses the weather holds!

We drove back to Franz Josef in crazy rain. Waterfalls had formed all along the roadside as water ran down from the mountains. In one place the road had been swept completely away but never fear, workmen were on hand, tapping the road with their toes to see if it would hold. Crazy NZ!

We had to cross over the river to get back into Franz. The water was less than a foot from the bridge (having been a trickle the night before) with whole trees being dragged away. Argh! Back home we had a shower and ate lunch wondering what to do with the rest of our day.

We headed out to the West Coast Wildlife Centre, a new kewi incubation centre, part of operation nest egg. Here they help the Rowi kiwi to have a greater survival rate, increasing to 95% success rate at the centre compared to 5% survival in the wild. This is due to man introducing stoats, and other mammals such as cats and dogs to NZ and the kiwi, being flightless can not fend for itself. How this works is they track the male adult kiwi and monitor it's forraging activity. On a regular night it will forrage up to 8/9 hours. During the incubation period of an egg, they will only forrage for around 2 hours. They monitor the egg for about 30 days before taking it from the nest and bringing it back to the centre to incubate it until hatched. We saw a chick at four days old, fluffy and beautiful! They then, at six months, get transported to an Island at the top of the South Island where they are the only inhabitants until they are over 1kg when they are brought back to their natural habitat and released. Numbers of this kiwi have increased to around 300 from low numbers. We saw 4 older kiwis too rustling about in the undergrowth of the specially designed nocturnal area. These will be released into the wild in the next couple of months.

We left the kiwi reserve to bright sunshine! It was like a completely different day! So, we headed up to the Franz Josef glacier to do some of the walks at ground level. Because of flooding we couldn't walk all the way to the glacier but we walked as far as we could, about 1500m from the glacier and then walked up Sentinel Hill to see the glacier from above. There were still lots of waterfalls and so it was really pretty. After that, we walked the Douglas loop, past Peter's Pool where the glacier reflects in the water. We walked onto the Douglas bridge, a suspension bridge over the river, which was a little scary to be honest. It rocked a lot! Also, the river below was full of huge chunks of ice from the glacier and was really fast flowing. We didn't want to fall in!!

Back in the carpark Claire spotted a Kia, an alpine parrot, so we did a couple of loops of the car park so we could get a good picture. He was very mischievous!!

The whole holiday Claire has wanted to pick up a hitchiker. NZ is one of the only places that it is still safe to hitchike, however none of the people we have passed so far have really appealed. However, on the road back from the glacier we passed an older, well dressed woman who flagged us down. She was from Wisconson and had lost her husband when he wandered off taking photos. She wanted a lift back to Franz and so we told her to jump in! She was very nice and told us a lot about her travels in NZ. We dropped her off outside the grocery store and she was extremely grateful! What a nice hitchiker!

Now we're back in Franz and have eaten a lovely alfresco dinner looking up at the snow capped mountains. It's a lovely warm evening, with the sun shining and hardly a cloud in the sky. Who'd have thought it??

We're going to drive to a nearby lake or lagoon to watch the sun set and then go for an early and hopefully peaceful night!