The best starting point for this trip is in Queenstown and you travel on the SH 6 to Wanaka, few miles before you get to the city of Wanaka is a main junction, and you should stay on the road to Wanaka, until the traffic sign West Cost. In the travel guide is the estimated travel time around 5.5h, add a few hours to the estimated time, it took us around 9h, for the distance, we took a lot of breaks to take photos. There is no rush to travel the scenery is changing all the time.  As we arrived at Franz Josef we booked the Glacier walk with The Helicopter line New Zealand very good value for money, and a lot of cometry from start to finish.