Driftwood on black beach

Mount Taranaki, extinct volcano

Goat in its kennel

So it’s ended, our sector of the Saga Ruby world cruise and in all honesty I can’t say it has been one of our best trips. We’ve seen some very special places but the weather has not been wonderful, being surrounded by elderly people all day every day is something of a strain, as Sue put it “rather like living in the world’s largest floating old peoples home!” No matter how good the food it will be nice to have something different on land.

From a professional point of view all four of the lecturers felt we were treated as something less than special being placed at early and mid afternoons in the ship’s cinema when most of the passengers we either sleeping off their lunch or going to other attractions like playing Bridge or water colour painting or attending computer lessons. The Cruise Director didn’t seem very enthusiastic about any of us and was keen to stage his own presentations on Maritime History at a peak time, mid morning in the premium venue, the Ballroom where he could get a larger captive audience. So it was somewhat unsatisfactory for us to perform for only 40 or 50 people a day, though in fairness all the presentations were video taped and played back on the internal tv system next day so that way were seen by more people.

Having landed we were soon in holiday mood and collected our hire car and set off to explore the country. We drove south, stopping at a black sand beach covered with driftwood, to New Plymouth for our first two nights and had a very good stay in a B&B by the sea. Excellent sea food, Sue had her share of local oysters and we drove out to Egmont National Park to see Mount Taranaki, an extinct volcano which is pretty impressive as you can see. On our way we passed a most unusual sight, a goat in a kennel !