Havelock home
After saying goodbye to Mike and Sue, Tim and I headed to Havelock for a one week stay on Marlborough Sounds. Our house is located in a bay of the sounds, with boat access being the only option. The trip required a 25 minute water taxi ride from Havelock harbor with all of our belongings. Deano, our driver, looked like a former rugby player but assured me is is not. Although his bulk came in handy when he brought a couple of our bags up the steep 100 meter trail to the cabin. Thanks, Deano! The Bach (New Zealand vacation home) is really a modern home with a full wall of windows looking at the bay, and another wall of windows looking at the forest. There are two decks, one on each side of the home. Surprisingly few water mammals to see, as the sound has been over fished and there isn’t as much food here for whales and dolphins who used to populate the sound.
The view from the front deck of our house.
The house is very modern and nice, though perhaps not designed as a winter house, since it has single pane windows and only a wood stove for heat. The temperature starts out in the mid 50s F (13c) each morning. I wait for a few minutes while Tim gets the wood stove fired up, which is in the center of our three bedroom house.
The wood supply we’ve been left wasn’t very dry, so it’s hard to get much heat from the stove. But by late morning the house is always comfortable. Towards the end of our week, Tim digs far enough into the woodpile to find some drier wood, and then the house heats up much faster.
Deb on morning coffee duty hoping for some heat to kick in
We spent a lovely week- reading, playing scrabble, kayaking in the sound. Deb finished her first knitting project, and Tim cleaned up photos on the computer, while we both worked on preparing our blog entries for the last month. Tim and I both read the book “Tales of a Female Nomad, Living at Large in the World” by Rita Golden Gelman. She calls herself a “modern-day nomad” with no permanent address and only the possessions she can carry. Tim and I related to her adventures, although our adventures seem tame compared to hers. Definitely a good read!
It’s amazing how a solid week of forced relaxation feels. We read lots of books, and enjoyed our quiet time with the views. We both miss hiking and being able to exercise out of doors- there are a couple of very rough trails here, but they were muddy enough that we didn’t go far on them. We wouldn’t want to do this long term, but it was a wonderful week of relaxation. But next it’s an early morning wakeup for packing and hauling luggage down to the dock in time to catch the water taxi. Then it’s on to the ferry that will take us to the North island, where we will stay a few days in Wellington. Looking forward to having internet access again.
