guided mornings, loose afternoons
Guided Vacation Packages With Real Gaps Left In
Guided vacation packages where somebody else holds the route and the mornings, and the afternoons are still yours to lose on purpose.
This is the band where the ground is worth a guide: rough roads, thin air, a language with a different alphabet, or a landscape that will not explain itself.
What separates a good version from a bad one is not the guiding, it is the gaps. A program with no air in it is the next band down and costs more; a program that abandons you at two in the afternoon in a place with nothing to do is worse than either.
So the gaps are printed. Every page in this band states the longest unbroken stretch that belongs to you, and it is never a rounding error.
Four of them, from $3,120 per person
What each page here prints before you ask
- A guide on the ground, with the hours they are yours for
- Committed hours counted, and the gaps counted too
- Who chooses where you eat, said outright
The other three shapes
- Nothing in the diaryBeds and transport are booked. Nothing else is, and every hour is yours to spend or waste.4 trips, from $1,780 per person
- One fixed thing a dayOne booked appointment each day. The other seven or eight hours belong to you.4 trips, from $2,190 per person
- A program with gapsA guide holds the route and the mornings. The afternoons are left loose on purpose.4 trips, from $3,120 per person
- Every hour heldA timetable somebody else keeps. On four of the five there is no alternative to it.5 trips, from $4,180 per person
The bar on each is a proportion, not a color: it shows how much of an average day is already spoken for.