Three places a long way past pavement, where you reserve a $5,260 vacation package

The $5,260 rung, and the three or four departures standing on it

Everything below is priced at $5,260 a head with two of you sharing a room. They are set out in no order of merit, because there is none to give.

How do three unrelated places cost the same?

They cost the same because the expensive part is not the country; it is the last stretch. Guyana is ten nights of savannah between forest and the Kanuku hills, reached by a light aircraft leg the operating company arranges. Alaska is nine nights around the largest national park in the country, entered on one gravel road. The Yukon is nine nights on another gravel road, across the Arctic circle to the Mackenzie delta. Fuel, vehicles, spare tires and people who know the route cost about the same in all three. Set side by side, the three still look nothing alike: grass and cattle, ice and spruce, tundra turning color in late August. The office does not tell people which to take and keeps no order of preference. It will say which one has road days you might find long, and it will leave the choice with you.

Limits at $5,260

This figure does not reach the Kimberley, east Greenland or the Santa Cruz steppe. Those three sit on the next rung, at $6,880, which is the last figure on the list. That is a fact about the list and not a suggestion. Inside $5,260 the limits are worth saying plainly. International flights sit outside every figure here. The office arranges no carriage by air or by sea and holds a contract with no carrier. Where a trip includes a light aircraft leg, the operating company arranges it and states it in the confirmation. Lodging in the Rupununi is simple and generator powered. In Alaska and the Yukon, distance means some nights fall in ordinary roadside rooms rather than anywhere memorable. Weather closes roads and grounds small aircraft, and the operator's terms say what happens then. Read that clause before you send a deposit.

Distances are real, and they eat days

On this rung the map is the main constraint. The Dempster highway runs about four hundred and fifty miles of gravel, with two fuel stops worth planning around. Wrangell to St Elias means a long approach from Anchorage and a slow road in. The Rupununi is a short flight or a very long drive from Georgetown, and the operating company prices both. None of that is hardship exactly. It does mean a nine night trip holds fewer stops than nine nights usually implies, and the itinerary shows that honestly. Deposits differ: Guyana asks twenty five percent at reservation, Alaska fifty, the Yukon the full amount, since the northern operator commits vehicles and fuel for a short season. Those shares are the operating companies' terms, not this office's. This office takes no payment and holds no card details. Send dates and the office will put the reservation forward and come back in writing.