For some people, cruising isn’t all about the people

A common theme in cruising writing is the idea that cruising is all about the people you meet. For a lot of people, I would say the majority of cruisers we’ve met, this is true. For most cruisers, cruising is all about the other cruisers they meet, or it is all about the local people they meet, or both.

I don’t know the right way to put this so I’ll just say it bluntly – for us , it’s not. It’s kind of difficult to explain so bear with me while I do my best. Meeting people (cruisers or locals) isn’t our main reason to cruise. Neither is experiencing local cultures. We LIKE other people. We LIKE experiencing cultures. But…

Our primary reason for being in the S Pacific is the amazing landscape, the amazing seascape, and the opportunity to live and to play in both.

We set off cruising with a love of the outdoors, a love of natural beauty, and with adventure in our hearts. When we went to the Grand Canyon, no one found it weird that our primary focus was to view and experience the Grand Canyon, not to meet local Americans and get invited to their daily functions. However, we get some weird looks when we try to verbalize the fact that this is also why we are here in the Pacific Islands. In fact, until recently we just didn’t mention it because we didn’t want to a) have to explain ourselves and b) get labeled as anti social by other cruisers when we are not. We are very social people, but although we’ve met wonderful, life-long friends cruising, we didn’t need to go cruising to meet great people. Quite the opposite - we left some of our favorite people in the world when we left to go cruising.

Now that we are coming out of the closet as nature cruisers, we are meeting many others like us. Carol likes to blurt out “We don’t really like people” (which isn’t true, but it is priceless to watch others react to this statement). Once we admit that we are nature cruisers rather than people cruisers, a number of other cruisers have come clean as well. We are actually a fairly sizeable minority.

Of course, it is not an either-or subject and many cruisers are super into people and super into nature rather than favoring one heavily over the other.
We reserve the right to change. We change cruising plans and destinations like we change shirts so maybe we’ll change our vibe and cruising goals as well.