what an hour of the day costs
What a Vacation Package Costs, and Why
What a vacation package costs here comes down to two things: the nights, and how many of the daylight hours somebody else is holding. The second one is the part nobody itemises.
Two things, and the second is the interesting one
The nights are easy to understand: a room, a bed, breakfast where there is one. They vary by country and by grade and not much else.
The hours are where the figures on this site actually separate. An hour with a guide in it costs money. An hour with a driver in it costs more. An hour with a permit attached to it can cost several hundred dollars on its own. An hour that is simply yours costs nothing at all, which is why the blank weeks at the top of the catalog cost the least here and the escorted trips at the bottom do not.
Once you see it that way the spread stops being mysterious. Crete at $1,780 and the Antarctic Peninsula at $11,400 are not the same product priced differently; they are eight committed hours a day apart.
What a night buys, on every trip here
- A bed
- Every night the page enumerates, at the standard it names, with the sleeping arrangement spelled out instead of hinted at
- Food
- Listed one meal at a time. No page here hides behind a phrase like half board
- Movement
- Whatever the page lists to move you: keys to a car, a seat on a train, a driver, a cabin
- A person at this end
- The same one throughout, on paper, from your opening question to the final night
What a committed hour buys, and what it costs
- A guide
- Somebody who knows the ground, and the removal of every decision that hour. Between $30 and $90 an hour across this catalog, usually shared
- A driver
- The same, plus a vehicle and its fuel, and on the rough-road trips a second driver on standby
- A permit
- On three of these it is the single largest line, dated, limited and not transferable
- A ship or a camp
- An hour on those is bought whole, because there is nothing to unbundle
- The hour you do not buy
- Costs nothing, buys nothing, and is the reason the blank weeks carry the lowest figures here
Outside every figure on this site
- Reaching the country
- Quoted separately after the dates harden, since a fare written down this week is fiction by the next
- Meals nobody counted
- Left out on purpose wherever choosing your own dinner is half the reason to be there
- Pharmacy items
- Jabs, pills, and on one of these seventeen the altitude tablets are not optional
- Border documents
- Entirely your errand, from application to confirmation
- A policy covering the trip
- Neither sold nor arranged nor recommended from this office
- Gratuities
- Where an operator expects them the page prints a figure rather than a hint
What this company adds
Nothing, at any stage, in any direction. No fee for the consultation, none for the digging, none for placing the booking, none for amending it, and none attached to a card, since no card is involved.
Whose account the money enters
Straight into the operator's, through whatever system they use. There is no till on this website, no card is kept, and no field anywhere could take one. Tickets and receipt reach you from them. If a trip falls over, their rules govern what follows, and the page on cancellation terms works through it.