Included in the price of the excursion was free entrance to the Glacier Hot Pools so we figured we might as well take advantage. On the way towards the pools, we stopped off at the West Coast Wildlife Centre which of course had kiwis but also informative displays and mock ups which the kids enjoyed.
We then went to the hot pools planning to get a private pool which they offer, but they claimed that it was too hot to be safe for my wife who was pregnant.
That night, I drove a half hour to the city of Okarito where I had booked a kiwi tour. It is one of the few places in all of New Zealand where it’s possible to see kiwis in the wild. The eccentric owner Ian leads nighttime tours to spot the rarest kiwi in the world, the Rowi, aka the Okarito Brown Kiwi, with fewer than 400 remaining due to introduced unnatural predators.
You need to be extremely quiet and have a ton of patience. Most of the time you’re just standing still, waiting anxiously for the kiwi to emerge from the bush and come onto the path. We tracked one kiwi for a full 2 hours. It’s hard to describe the excitement of locating one (they are very sparse, one pair per square km), hearing its calls and the crunching as it walks, and the exhilaration when it finally emerges.
In the end, we left at 7pm, came back at midnight, and ended up seeing 2 of them. In my opinion it was certainly worthwhile.
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