⛵ A Kitchen Monk™ Recommended Experience
Sail Toward Flourishing
National Health Association whole-food, plant-based group travel, including cruises with Windstar
The trip of a lifetime, without leaving your healthy lifestyle at the dock.
Travel Is Where Healthy Habits Often Go Overboard
Vacations, cruises, and buffets are where many people feel their healthy routines slip away. The National Health Association’s plant-based travel program flips that: whole-food, plant-based meals, like-minded travelers, and a community that makes healthy living feel like part of the adventure. It is the NHA’s “learn together, eat together” spirit, carried out to sea.
🚢 Windstar & the NHA
Windstar Cruises worked with the NHA to create a whole-food, plant-based menu prepared without added salt, oil, or sugar, and gluten-free. After growing out of NHA group sailings, it rolled out across Windstar’s small-ship fleet starting in June 2023.
🏆 Award-Winning
The NHA, in collaboration with Lisa McCarl, received the 2024 Travel Weekly Magellan Gold Award for Innovation in Group Plant-Based Travel.
🌏 Around the World
NHA group trips have sailed or are planned to places such as Japan, Southeast Asia, and Italy. Itineraries change and often sell out, so check the NHA’s travel page for what’s open now.
🩺 A Flourishing Nurse at the Helm
Lisa McCarl
NHA Travel Advisor · McCarl Travel · Former Open-Heart Recovery Nurse
Lisa McCarl spent years as an open-heart recovery nurse, caring for people after cardiac surgery. Today she is a travel advisor with McCarl Travel, an NHA Life Member, and the NHA’s travel advisor, helping build its plant-based group travel program alongside Executive Director Wanda Huberman. Her industry recognitions include the Top Legacy Agent Award and status as a Windstar Cruises Club 180 Top Partner.
Lisa’s path is exactly what Kitchen Monk means by Flourishing Nursing Forward™. A nurse who once helped hearts recover after surgery now helps people keep their hearts healthy while seeing the world. She noticed that people changing how they eat wanted to keep that lifestyle while traveling, and she helped build a way to make it easy. Nursing’s reach does not end at the hospital door. Sometimes it sails.
How to Join a Sailing
- Become an NHA member. NHA says members receive priority notice about trips, and trips fill quickly.
- Check the NHA travel page for current itineraries, sold-out trips, and waitlists.
- Contact the NHA’s travel advisor using the contact details on the NHA travel page.
- Join the NHA plant-based travel group on Facebook to meet fellow travelers.
Bring someone you love. Like the NHA conference, these trips are for everyone: patients, families, clinicians, and friends learning and eating together. Back to the NHA Community Orchard →
Independent recommendation. Kitchen Monk™ recommends the National Health Association’s plant-based travel program. Kitchen Monk does not sell travel, earn commissions, or book trips, and is not affiliated with the NHA, Windstar Cruises, or McCarl Travel. Itineraries, prices, availability, and menus are set by those organizations and may change. If you have medical conditions, food allergies, or mobility needs, talk with your clinician and the cruise line before traveling. Information last reviewed: September 2026.
