We had gone looking for overtourism.
What we found first was a cruise ship.
It was still early in the morning. We stood high above the Bay of Kotor on the old serpentine road winding up the mountain in tight bends. Below us lay water, mountains, small settlements and Kotor’s old town. A broad, quiet landscape.
It was beautiful already.
But, honestly, from this height it could for a moment have been Lake Garda seen from Monte Baldo. Spectacular, expansive, blue. Yet still without a clear sense of scale.
Then the ship entered the bay.
Slowly, almost silently, remarkably large. Suddenly the landscape acquired its dimensions. The ship showed how wide the bay was, how high the mountains rose and how small Kotor lay beneath them. At the same time, the light improved. The morning sun reached the first stretches by the water as the ship continued gliding towards the town.
Of all things, it was the alien presence that completed the picture.
A ship as part of the landscape
Later, we cycled from Kotor along the small coastal road through Dobrota.
We had breakfast by the water, swam and kept looking at the ship. It now lay off the old town and could be seen from almost everywhere. Among stone houses, churches, little landing stages and the mountains behind, it became a kind of second horizon.
We knew what a ship like that meant.
Several thousand people can arrive at once. Kotor is small. Perast is smaller still. Both embody precisely the kind of beauty people travel from all over the world to see: old stone, water, mountains, history, a compact setting easily turned into a day trip.
So we had expected what reports about Kotor keep describing: crowded lanes, tour groups, traffic jams, overburdened infrastructure.
That day, there was only one larger ship in the bay.
Really, that should have been enough.
Where was everyone?
Around midday, we deliberately went into the old town.
We wanted to see what cruise tourism felt like there.
The town was busy. Of course. Many people were walking through the narrow lanes, café tables filled the squares, visitors waited outside attractions.
But it was not uncomfortably crowded.
No endless groups with identical stickers on their shirts. No guides holding signs aloft with fifty people following through the lanes. No crush in which you can only be pushed in one direction.
We were surprised.
The day before, we had already seen tour groups in Perast at eight in the morning. Perhaps they had gone on to Kotor afterwards. Perhaps many were already back on board. Perast and Kotor are small. In a few hours, you can see a surprising amount.
Hardly any cruise coach climbs the serpentine road. The many steps to the fortress above Kotor probably do not feature in the standard programme for a large share of passengers either.
And then: lunch. If you have already paid for lunch on the ship, it is easy to go back rather than pay again in town. The ship is close. The buffet is waiting. So is the cabin.
We know that rhythm.
We were cruise passengers too
Not long ago, we took two cruises: one through the Aegean, one in the Caribbean. One with the whole family, one just the two of us. And we had enjoyed both surprisingly much.
We still say that with a lingering trace of guilt. Cruises stand for much of what we view critically about travel: large numbers, heavy resource use, short stays, organised routines, places reduced to items on an itinerary.
At the same time, it is an exceptionally pleasant way to travel.
You have a fixed place to stay and still keep moving. You travel over the sea. You arrive somewhere new in the morning. You are not constantly packing suitcases. The food can be far better than the cliché of an overcrowded buffet. Besides the big excursions, you can organise plenty yourself. And in a short time you see places you would otherwise struggle to combine in a single journey.
In the Aegean, that worked particularly well for us. The ports were often close to the places we wanted to see. We could get off early, set out on our own and return in good time.
Quickly in, quickly out again
On Rhodes, we were precisely the cruise tourists we had been looking for in Kotor. Off the ship early. A walk around town. A little sightseeing, a little browsing. Back on board for lunch.
We had seen Rhodes.
At least part of it.
But we had not eaten there, bought anything or spent a night. Much of our money stayed within the system that had brought us.
For us, that is the hardest problem with cruise tourism.
Not necessarily the number of people. But how briefly they stay and how little their visit connects with everyday life in the place.
An overnight visitor stays, at least for a while. They have breakfast, shop, eat out in the evening, perhaps need a parking space, a bus, a pharmacy. They remain when the old town grows emptier in the evening.
A cruise passenger arrives in the morning and disappears before the place recovers its rhythm.
In the Caribbean, that distance sometimes became clearer. Around some terminals lay newly built malls, beach clubs and marinas. Taxis took guests to selected beaches. Beyond them, at times, began decay and poverty.
The infrastructure was geared towards very large numbers of visitors. But you could wonder how much of their money actually stayed in the place.
No complaint about other people
Even so, we do not want to join the chorus of complaints about overtourism.
How could we?
We go where it is beautiful ourselves. Not where it is only moderately beautiful.
We also travel at times when a place reveals something of why we chose it. Early or late in the season, gladly. Off-season, not at any price. Thailand in the rainy season may have its advantages. It appeals less to us.
We get up early. We like staying overnight. We leave the main streets. That changes our visit.
But it does not make us a fundamentally different kind of tourist.
We belong just as much among the people who want to see Dubrovnik, Kotor, Santorini or Rhodes. And sometimes we enter those places by way of a cruise ship’s gangway.
Perhaps that is why the word overtourist is more useful than overtourism.
Not as an accusation.
As a reminder that the problem is never only other people.
The ship in the bay
When we looked over the bay again later, the ship was still lying off Kotor.
It had made the landscape look larger that morning. It had brought people, caused traffic and probably disgorged more visitors in a few hours than some places can accommodate in an entire day.
And yet we had not experienced the overcrowding we expected.
Perhaps we were there at the right time. Perhaps one ship really was still manageable. Perhaps the passengers had long since dispersed back on board.
The contradiction remained.
Cruises can burden places and be a wonderful way to travel. They can bring many people yet leave little locally. A ship can dominate a bay and at the same time give it a sense of scale.
We will probably take another cruise.
And next time, we will probably try again to get off early, set out independently and see as much of a place as possible.
But we also know now: quickly in and quickly out again remains part of this kind of travel.
In Kotor, we had gone looking for overtourism.
What we found was our own role in it.