Rick Steves, the travel guy, categorizes travelers into three distinct types: tourists, travelers, and pilgrims. Tourists seek relaxation and entertainment, often engaging in what some might call superficial experiences, while travelers aim for deeper connections and understanding of the places they visit. Pilgrims, on the other hand, embark on journeys with a spiritual or transformative purpose.
Simply stated, his categories fall into these areas.
- Tourists — Tourists typically prioritize relaxation and entertainment, often focusing on superficial aspects of travel.
- Travelers — Travelers seek meaningful experiences, aiming to connect with local cultures and communities.
- Pilgrims — Pilgrims travel with a spiritual or transformative goal, often reflecting on their journey.
- Cultural Engagement — Steves emphasizes that engaging with locals leads to a richer travel experience.
- Budget Travel — A tight budget can encourage travelers to explore local alternatives, fostering deeper connections.
Over the years, I have often thought of what sort of travel Brenda and I have focused on, always zeroing in on the same category, “traveler”.
These days the label of “tourist” has become a category perhaps best illustrated on Instagram, where folks rush from place to place, taking selfies, in part to prove to their social media “friends” that they were there. I have to believe that when they return home they are probably ready for a vacation, exhausted from making sure that they did not miss anything and that they proved to their “friends” that there life is more full than others.
Of course, when all the time you have is two or three weeks a year, that might be the best way to travel so you will return feeling like you made the most out of your limited time away.
For “vacation cruisers” it seems to me that chartering in the BVIs is the perfect embodiment of this mentality. Don’t get me wrong, if I only had a week or two to go sailing, that’s exactly what I would do as cruising there is compact and predictable. The BVI is a nice manageable scale and you can get a bit of “cruising” in and not spend too much of your short week afloat moving around. A few hours sailing, or motoring, each day and lots of time to hang out on a mooring is the best approach when your time away is limited.
However, when you “cast off the docklines” and are lucky enough to make the transition from short term to long term cruising, time away begins to take on a different meaning, less focused on checking off a list and more about making the most of the experience of being away for months at a time.
Our first season in the Bahamas saw us cover 1,000 miles, and we visited as many islands as we could cram into our three months there. We carried this approach to Cuba during our two months there, also covering nearly 1,000 miles and into the Caribbean where we visited so many islands in our first season that we lost count. I have to admit to a bit of nostalgia as I looked back on my post at the end of our first season in the Bahamas in 2013.
After a few years cruising the Caribbean, we found ourselves staying put for a lot longer, enjoying the harbors that we enjoyed the most as opposed to striving to see as much as we could in a set time. A good example was the year we were in Bequia during the Easter week, participating in some local fun when Brenda competed with a local boy to see which team could “thread the needle” the fastest. Yes, a sewing needle. I wrote about this remarkable week in this post at the time. They won!
While covering a lot of ground has been our approach during our first season in the Med has been a lot about covering ground, that’s been more about our interest in cruising Italy and points east, where the winds are, hopefully, more consistent.
As I sit here, with only a day before we begin our journey back to Bosa, we are focused on a plan to spend more time enjoying the finer points of Bosa than what we experienced during our visit in May, the last stop on our two month journey. We hope to be less focused on “what’s next” and more on experiencing again what we loved the most about Sardinia, knowing that we have only scratched the surface.
Over the years Brenda has become more and more focused on spending time with “her people”, those that value working with their hands, especially with fiber. A great example of how anything fiber or sheep captures her attention, was the night we were having a glass of wine, or two, at a tiny cafe in Bosa when she noticed that one of the hand woven table runners had a pattern of sheep.
And anyone that knows Brenda, knows that she loves anything sheep…
She had to have that runner and asked the owner if she could buy it even though it wasn’t for sale. He snatched it from the table that had two other guests and agreed to let it go for 6 euros. It was hers and she was one happy girl, already knowing what it would become.
Fast forward and now it’s a handbag. Of course, she knew what it would become as everything in Brenda’s life eventually ends up as a handbag. Well most everything…
Brenda loves lace and found some of “her people” that did lace, even though they had never met. They didn’t even speak English but spoke the same “language” of lace.
In 2016 we visited Cuba for two months and before heading there, Brenda spent time trying to see if any of “her people” lived there and learned that there was a woman who did bobbin lace in Havana. When we arrived, she set out and found her, here wearing green, and did so on our very first day in the city. She was thrilled and wrote about what was a magical experience for her.
So, are we Tourists, travelers or pilgrims?
Oh yeah, there is also the question of spending money and while I will generally spend what it takes, I am always mindful of what we “need” to spend to enjoy ourselves and as the days we have left in what might be called “the go-go years” of retirement, I’ll admit that we are loosening the purse strings a bit but I can still be pretty much of a Yankee, true to my Scottish roots, making it tough for me to part with “the green”.
I agree with Steves that the more you spend you begin to loose connection with those who might, as Brenda might say, become “your people”, those chance encounters that lead to something more…
So, back to what category we fall into.
Brenda, I can say with confidence, is a blend of traveler and pilgrim as after knowing her for most of my life, nearly six decades, is always on a quest to better understand herself.
Me? I am a much simpler person and while I love to take photos, like a tourist, I am more interested in immersing myself in the culture and community wherever we are and really don’t care if we see all the hot spots, preferring to sit down in a cafe and do some “people watching” whether it’s over a cup of coffee or a glass of wine at the end of the day, and I’ll admit, sometimes wine at lunch…
When it comes to “finding myself”. Hmm… I’m not all that deep so let’s leave it at that.
Perhaps this chapter, our nest few seasons in the Med, I hope to more fully immerse myself in the culture and people of the areas we are visiting and perhaps, more important than that, is that this is a step in my attempt to replace the community that we have left behind, the community that we were a part of for so many winter seasons in the Caribbean.
And, to that point, over the more than 15 years and 1,200 posts on this blog, the response from my last post the other day about “community” has produced more response than any that I have ever written and it meant a lot.
I was particularly touched by this comment that I received a few days ago from someone who I have never met. It takes a lot of time to do a post and it meant a lot to know that what I have to say meant something to someone. He said…
“Hi Bob,
Your recent post about community spurred me to email.
Long time reader of your blog and I do not believe I have ever contacted you to thank you for the inspiration, information and entertainment. Thank you for all the efforts, pictures, adventure stories and entertainment! You (and Brenda) have been an inspiration to me. In fact, the context of your early retirement and boating has help shape my own goals. We live in Florida and have two high school aged kids. Soon, I strive to follow closely to your course with one deviation, no sails…we bought a trawler about a year ago.
Took me a few minutes this morning but figured you would want to know how I found your blog. About 15 years ago, I was reading a blog called Drift Away. That trawler blog had blog link to Ilene the boat who shared your blogs link since at that time you had the same type of boat. And now, your blog is read with coffee as I log into work.
Please excuse my delayed appreciation and hopefully your virtual community is accepting of non-sailors. You are an amazing adventure maker along with being a great writer so please know your blog is very much enjoyed.
Again, thanks for the inspiration and entertainment!
Brian”
Knowing that there is “someone out there” is important as it keeps me motivated and those that have followed me over the years may recall that for the first seven years of writing I did so for my parents who would often sit down at the end of a day and read my most recent post while having a glass of wine. When they passed, it took time for me to find my footing and now, nearly a decade later, I am happy to say that it is clear that there is somebody out there that is reading my posts. On the first page of my blog is a short piece that speaks to the “why I write this blog” and speaks to my motivation during those early years.
It means a lot to hear from you so please keep those cards and letters coming…
And think of us as we head back to Pandora and act one, scene two of our time in the Med.
We hope that you will follow along as we do our best to be true to what Rick Steves calls a “traveler”.
Brenda often has a very different take on the same experiences that I write about. Consider following along with her too. www.argoknot.com
So, do tell, are you a tourist, traveler or pilgrim?