Harmonie - The Bach - Malborough Sounds, South Island, New Zealand

The Bach - Malborough Sounds, South Island, New Zealand

Harmonie

Don and Anne Myers

Fri 27 Mar 2009 06:24

40:57.16S 173:57.24E

Sorry for the delay! Land touring is whole lot more time consuming than boat touring, leaving little time for blog writing. Typing while underway on the boat is possible assuming there is no bow slamming, rolling or generally wild wallowing going on, but typing while navigating across incredibly curvy roads, over hundreds of one-lane bridges and through scary mountain passes is not possible for the faint of heart. Besides, looking down to type would have meant missing the scenery - which was something else altogether. More on that later. At night no blog writing took place because we were too busy eating, playing Rummikub or planning the next day's excursion. All lame excuses, but there you go.

Moving on. And time has moved on, hasn't it? An entire month has slipped by and here we are back on the boat faced with the task of whipping everything into shape and loading up with provisions to carry us through the next seven months. We've got about two weeks to get everything done, and knowing Don, everything will get done regardless of the amount of effort I manage to put forth. In the meantime, the blog will be updated to cover our adventures over the past month - starting with our first week of our month-long South Island tour - The Bach.

Bach - as in bachelor's pad. It's what we would call a camp, a cabin or a rough cottage. Named bach because the hearty, keen, outdoorsy men of New Zealand have a history of building these structures in out-of-the-way places and then escaping to them as much as possible. In more modern times, baches are used for family vacations (or holidays as the New Zealanders would say). Annette and Tony's bach has been in Annette's family for more than thirty years. Set in the Marlborough Sounds area, which is on the northeast corner of the South Island, Annette and Tony escape to their bach as much as possible throughout the southern hemisphere's summer months (December - March). In typical New Zealand hospitality fashion, we were invited for a week at their bach after only meeting Annette and Tony a few times on Storyteller with Sue and John.

We spent the last part of February and first part of March with Sue and John and Annette and Tony at the bach. Below are pictures and explanations. New Zealanders, more commonly known as Kiwis - named after the scarce and incredibly cute flightless kiwi bird, which is New Zealand's national bird (not to be confused with the kiwi fruit) - have a language all their own, which is loosely based on English. As much kiwi-talk as possible is included below - just to give you a better feel for the place.

Picture 1 - The bach as seen from the jetty. Originally built around fifty years ago and expanded several times, it contains three bedrooms (two with doors, one with a curtain that may have been a bed sheet at one time), a toilet room, a shower room, a kitchen and game/spare bedroom/living room. Electricity is occasionally provided by an ancient generator (circa 1926), fondly referred to as 'the banger'. Every day at tea time, Annette could be heard bellowing across the yard to Tony (whom she fondly refers to as 'Tones'), 'Tones!! I'm going to turn on the banger, and plug in the jug for a wee bit of tea!! Would you like some? And a bit of Christmas cake?'. To which Tony invariably would respond, 'Sounds lovely!!' Water is provided to the bach via gravity directly from a stream that runs down from the hilltop. Cooking is done by Annette on a wood stove - probably equal in antiquity to the generator. Adjacent to the wood stove is the 'hot water closet', where the water is heated to temperatures beyond scalding by the wood stove. This was sometimes a danger to those of us that washed many of the dishes. The general decor was late 1950's or 60's with mismatched linoleum (or 'lino') on the floor and comfy chairs covered with towels where the stuffing was peeking out. All extremely comfortable in a bach sort of way - reminding us of lake camps we stayed in when we were kids.

There was a structure to every day we spent at the bach and it went something like this:

Up at 8 or 9 and for a leisurely breakfast.

Hop in Annette and Tony's tinny and motor over to the neighbor's jetty where we could more easily tramp up the hills from the sea.

Tramp for two or three hours so that all the eating, laying about reading, drinking and eating some more could be properly justified. Pictures 2, 3 and 4 were taken during some of our daily tramps. In picture 4, Tony is on the right, John on the left with Don and Sue in front of him admiring the view. The views were lovely. Tall, green, steep hills cascading down into the blue, blue water. The coastline of the Sounds area is so convoluted with curves hiding bays and tall hills obscuring sea views, it often looks like a series of incredibly blue lakes and not the ocean coastline that it is.

Return to the bach after tramping and eat a fantastic lunch whipped up by Annette and Sue - which often included things like cold lamb or canned asparagus sammy's, bean salad, savory eggs, chopped vege and Kiwi wine. Dash good.

The afternoon was spent outside reading in the sun or shade, depending on preference (picture 5 - Sue preferring partial shade in Tony's chair/swing contraption). Or, more often for the men folk, the afternoon was spent fishing (fushing), resulting in nine blue cod and one maori chief caught as well as a dozen or two or three of the prized Marlborough Sounds green-lipped mussels nicked from the nearby mussel farm. When the men folk returned to the bach after a successful fushing afternoon, they were always greeted enthusiastically by the women folk in the following fashion, 'Good on you! Mussels! Excellent! Ten fush! Well done!

Cocktail hour - each and every day. On the jetty weather permitting (picture 6) - a full round or two of G&T's for all unless you were American and drank the much less popular V&T. The water was often calm and always crystal clear at this time of day and we were visited by various sea creatures while we sipped - a sting ray (picture 7), starfish (picture 8), and the elusive blue-lipped mussels (picture 9)

Dinner - cooked by Annette and Sue. Annette perfectly pan fried blue cod on the wood stove, the main sometimes prefaced with a starter of green-lipped mussels or Marlborough Sounds scallops (dredged from the sea bottom during scallop season by Tony and kept in the freezer waiting for our arrival).

Wine - heaps of Kiwi wine. We, along with Sue and John, offered to buy wine to bring to the bach, but Annette insisted she and Tones already had 'Heaps! Positively heaps of wine!' at the bach already. Good thing since we went through at least three-quarters of a heap while we were there.

Dessert - chocolate. Heaps.

Scotch - the men folk often felt the need for a nightcap or two. Picture 10 is John, Don and Tony indulging.

Entertainment - Take Two and Rummikub before dinner and poetry reading after dinner. I'm not kidding. Poetry reading. Read from a volume titled something like, 'New Zealanders (or Kiwis?) 100 favorite poems'. Then later, usually after the scotch came out, poetry read from a volume titled something like, 'Nursery Rhymes Your Mother Never Read'. These were more of the 'There once was a man from Nantucket' variety, but not quite as crass. The entertainment value definitely increased after a wee bit of wine and a dram or two of scotch.

And so it went. For six days. As the Kiwis would say, 'Not too bad! (slight inflection up at the end and elongate the word bad - 'Not too baad!) Fantastic! Excellent! Magic! Lovely! Brilliant! Stunning!

We couldn't have asked for a better way to kick off our tour of the South Island. We can't thank Annette and Tony enough for their hospitality. We hope the opportunity to reciprocate pops up in the future. Although we'll have to work on our poetry collection between now and then.

Anne