Punakaiki and Franz Josef Glacier
On the drive down from Westport to Franz Josef, you end up driving past Punakaiki which is famous for what is known as the pancake rocks. There is a nice 15 minute or so walk here and some amazing sights and sounds as you listen to the water crashing and eroding the rocks, and funnelling and smashing into these long narrow channels carved into the coast.
So - after that we headed off to Franz Josef. The hosel that we stayed in their was called "Chateau Franz" and was one of our favorite places that we stayed. It was good stuff. We had some good pizza (ok, we had beer too) at some pub their (I think it was called Blue Ice) and got all rested up for our glacier hike the next day.
The glacier hike was a love hate relationship 
- we were on the ice about 2 hours longer than scheduled due to our 2 guides carving a new path for us to hike through as their had been some recent shifting of the glacier. We were exhausted by the time it was over, but it was well worth it. The scenery from up on the glacier was stunning. The glacier ice is really amazing, so blue, and so interesting to the touch. It's almost as if it is a massive 3-dimensional puzzle assembled by God himself, that's quite literally what the ice is like.
As for the scenery:
So yah - by the time it was over, we were both wishing we were dead, and were extremely glad to get off our feet. But it was truly an amazing and unforgettable experience. The danger of huge crevasses only a slip or wrong step away, along with the sheer size and majesty of this age-old mountain of ice was truly fantastic.
