Punakaiki pancake rocks and blowholes

Nature began this work of art about 30 million years ago. Over thousands of years, alternating layers of small marine creatures and sand became buried and compressed on the ocean floor. This created areas with multiple layers of hard limestone and softer sandstone. Earthquake activity then lifted the ocean floor high and dry, and those slow motion artists - the rain and the wind - began to erode the softer sandstone. The outcome is cliffs and ravines with hundreds of horizontal slices along their vertical faces, like huge stacks of pancakes.

In many places, deep inside the cliffs, narrow vertical air shafts created by the rain met with horizontal tunnels created by the pounding ocean. Today, around high tide, the ocean swells rush headlong through ever-narrowing tunnels and force large amounts of water and compressed air to race upward through the vertical shafts. The result is a hissing, heaving, thumping countryside that rhythmically emits geyser-like plumes of salt water. At high tide in a strong westerly swell, this creation of nature is a very impressive sight.

A well-maintained walkway to the pancake rocks leads through native forest before emerging into areas of coastal flax and scrub. The track offers magnificent views of the inland mountains, the rugged coastline and the main attraction - the pancake rocks and blowholes. Informative signage along the way helps you to make sense of what you're seeing.

Mount Aspiring National Park

Ancient Maori trails followed safe passages through this beautifully rugged and unforgiving terrain. The Maori journeyed in search of pounamu (greenstone or jade), prized for making tools, weapons and ornaments. Later, Europeans farmed the fertile river valleys and mined some areas for minerals. Today this large area is preserved as national park and forms part of Te Wahipounamu - Southwest New Zealand World Heritage Area.

A hiker's paradise, Mount Aspiring National Park offers a large number of short walks that are mostly concentrated at the end of the park's access roads. Longer hikes through beautiful valleys, with options to traverse mountain saddles, include the Routeburn, the Dart/Rees River circuit, Greenstone/Caples and the Wilkin Valley tracks.

The park is peppered with mountains. Mount Aspiring is the highest, and the only peak over 3000 metres outside Mount Cook National Park. One of the most unusual areas in the park is the Red Hills mineral belt in the southwest. Here the concentration of magnesium in the soil is so high that only a few hardy plants survive.

Throughout the park, beech forests dominate below the tree line. Red beech favour sunny, frost-free situations, while at higher altitudes you will find silver or mountain beech happily surviving winter snowfalls. Open areas caused by slips and avalanches are first repopulated by ribbonwoods, one of New Zealand's few deciduous trees. Above the tree line are snow tussock grasslands and herb fields with mountain buttercups and daisies.

Many species of native bird happily share the lush river valleys, and walkers are continuously serenaded by delightful birdsong. The park's alpine areas are home to the threatened rock wren and the highly entertaining kea, a mischievous mountain parrot that is not to be trusted. Kea occasionally help themselves to visitors' lunches and show a surprising interest in man-made objects, such as shoes, packs and tents.

West Coast glaciers

While glaciers around the world are retreating, the Fox and Franz Josef glaciers still flow almost to sea level. The temperate climate at this low altitude means these glaciers are among the most convenient to visit in the world. Easy walks to the foot of the glaciers pass along ancient river valleys with steep sides bearing gigantic horizontal scars from when the glaciers have retreated and advanced over millennia. When you stand close to the foot of these glaciers, their sheer enormity is very humbling.

Here are some facts to help you get the picture: Over its 13 kilometre length, the Fox glacier plummets 2,600 metres from high in the Southern Alps. It is fed by four alpine glaciers that receive around 30 metres of snowfall each year. The snow is compacted at the top of the glacier into blue ice hundreds of metres deep. This ice slides down hill to the more level river valley below, where it is still 300 metres thick. The movement is lubricated by ice that melts under pressure between the glacier and the steep valley floor. This effect, combined with the high snowfall feeding the top of the glacier, means the Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers flow around ten times faster than most valley glaciers.

Shelving in the valley floor deep beneath the glacier causes cracking, upheaval and deep ravines in the glacier surface, creating a dramatic and potentially dangerous frozen landscape. Surface melting occurs throughout the lower altitudes, feeding the frigid rivers that flow out the rocky ravines and on through temperate rainforests to the Tasman Sea.

Professional guides lead journeys onto the ice; helicopters or ski planes can take you up to where the glaciers begin.