The Amazon Prime stop

Harvesting Mussels Pelorus Sound

Eating green mussels from Pelorus Sound

Pelorus Sound mailboat run and green mussels in Havelock.

Into the car by 9:10 and drove in driving rain to Havelock, the green mussel capital of New Zealand and, perhaps, the world. A small town on a bend in the road that sits in the innermost crook of a series of convoluted sounds northwest of Blenheim. Wuzza sound, you might ask? A sound is a flooded river valley and derives its name from the frequent sounding for depth — ropes with weights — used by ancient mariners.

But we’re not here for the mussels; we’re here to ride the mailboat to the sounds’ outer islands and edges, which have no roads. The mailboat, operated by the Johnson family since they took over from the unprofitable government steamship mail service out of Wellington in 1918, brings not only mail but construction materials, animals, groceries, all manner of life support. The Johnson’s contract for this endeavor in 1924 was 224 pounds sterling. They sold the business in 1970, about 10 years after the green mussel business really took off, bringing 200 million into the town and employing 1,500 people … bringing prosperity back to a very small town that used to have 20 hotels for gold miners before the turn of the last century.

We board a 70-foot catamaran berthed in a row of pleasure boats and a transplanted Scot named Jim and his trusty female sidekick Bindy glide us out of the harbor and into the first sound, which is difficult to really see through the wrap-around rain and spray spattered windows. A cute two-year-old child screams in the rear seats. We’re off to our first stop as Jim, microphone in hand, guides the boat with his other and tells us about the area. The houses along both shores for the first half hour get mail the “regular way” because they have a road, albeit narrow, twisting and, therefore, exceedingly slow. After that, the few houses and farms we see must rely totally on the mail boat, a Johnson family barge for really big stuff, or a helicopter.

The rain is pelting down but the mountains rising out of the sounds, layers of them receding into the distance everywhere we look, are mysterious and wild. Almost all of them have been logged about two-thirds of their height — many almost a century past — so their peaks are deeply forested with a variety of trees but their sides are uniformly deep green pines and gully fern trees.

Our first stop is at a wood dock where Jim stays at the wheel and Bindy exchanges some heavy canvas mail bags with an elderly gent who, with his wife, has retired from their business of taking care of houses rented to tourists around the Havelock sounds (not many in the Pelorus Bay where he lives, but many more in Queen Charlotte Bay, a half-hour cruise away).

Jim backs away from the dock, everybody on the boat waves at the old fellow who waves merrily back and, wiping away the condensation coating the front windows of our boat, Jim tells us about the Foote family farm, where fifth-generation Emily is turning 90. She found possums living in the hills above her, trapped them and sold their fur, which is more precious than merino wool. She also learned the tides and currents of the sounds so she could row to Havelock and back in a single day. 18 miles each way assisted by a three-knot tide. We will stop at her family farm’s site where some of us will be served lunch.

Our second stop, about 20 minutes after the first and further from Havelock, which is long gone in the islands and twisting headlands behind us, is at Nadia Bay where a man drives a tractor hauling a trailer to the dock and Bindy passes him boxes and bags of groceries and a mail bag and he gives her some stuff to stow in the forward hold. This fellow has a long and heavy beard … maybe a ZZ Top refugee … and he waits patiently in the pouring rain while five or six people, Cynthia included, take photos of him surrounded by his newly delivered goods.

It is exceedingly strange to me that there are people on this planet who seem to relish having their photo taken every time they get their mail.

We go to the Foote’s farm, which has a fully stocked bar and beer on tap but no Emily in evidence, stay for about 40 minutes, reboard the boat and make our way further from Havelock for stop number four where Bindy hands another, even older and wilder ZZ Top refugee an Amazon Prime box. You cannot escape it (though David wonders about that two-day option).

We make a few more hand-offs in remote bays and in heavy chop and pouring rain begin to make our way back to Havelock when Jim spies a mussel boat hauling in its catch. He sidles up to it and idles at its side so we can gawk at the five musselmen and one apprentice on deck feeding the long rope looped through 80 buoys through a variety of machines to fill the seven-foot tall white sacks eventually stacked across the deck of the boat with one ton each of mussels: 66,000 tons last year.

We won’t bore you with details other than to say that these sounds are perfect for mussels: the three-meter daily tide brings them beaucoup phytoplankton, the normally ever-present sunshine keeps the water at the right temperature, and the secluded bays shelter boats from waves that would inhibit their ability to work almost every day. Final fact: Every single mussel filters 360 kilos of water a day.

The rain stops about a half mile out of Havelock, where Cynthia and I meet Robin and Bernice Sutherland for drinks and dinner at the Slip Inn café, quai-side restaurant. A good time is had by all.

Another rather rainy day in Paradise.