Reed channels, wet cedar forest, cliffs full of nesting birds
Three places whose poor half is another week: wide spread weeks reserved through an independent San Diego office
Three places carry this mark. Seven nights in a reed delta on the Black Sea, from $1,520 per person. Six nights on an island of very old cedar under near constant cloud, from $3,180. Six nights on treeless northern islands in the first three weeks of June, from $1,940. All figures for two sharing a double room. Wide means the poor version is recognisably a different holiday from the good one.
Reserve one of these weeksSend the form whenever it suits: it never shuts. Someone here replies inside one working day, and no charge arises at this end.
Distance, not luck, at level three
Three of four means the two printed versions of a week are far enough apart that they are not the same holiday. Same beds, same guide, same figure, different trip. It is given where the thing people travel for is a condition rather than an object: a horizon that has to be clear, water at a level that lets a boat into the small channels, a bird colony that has to still be on the ledges when you arrive. None of those can be sold and none of them are. What is sold at this level is the ground underneath: an island of cedar is an island of cedar in rain, a delta is still a delta in wind. The office prints the wide number because it would rather lose the booking than have you find out in week five of your planning.
How to buy a wide week
Give yourself more days than the week needs. Every one of these three sits in a country worth a second week on its own, and two extra nights either side turn a washed out trip into a trip with a bad patch in it. Pick the longest window the season allows rather than the middle of it, so a poor forecast can be walked away from. Ask the operator, through this office, what the alternative programme is on a lost day, and get the answer in writing before you commit; at this level the answer is the difference between the two halves being close in practice and being as far apart as they read. And decide in advance what you will do if you draw the poor week: go anyway, or go a different year. Both are reasonable. Choosing on the morning is not.
Cliff ledges, reed and wet cedar
Cliff ledges are the clearest case on this site. Six nights on the northern islands are sold on a June coast where birds nest on horizontal shelves of sandstone within twenty feet of a clifftop path, and in a good year the noise is the loudest thing you have stood next to. The birds are not owned by anyone. Numbers across the north Atlantic have been falling for years and colonies shift, so some seasons a stretch of cliff that was full is thin. The rock does not move. Neither does the reed water in the delta, where two hundred square miles of channel stay navigable whatever the light does, nor the cedar on the island, which has stood in cloud for a very long time and looks its best wet.
3 places sit here
Asked before anybody commits
Can you tell us which week in June is best for the cliffs?
No, and anyone who does is guessing. The nesting weeks move with the season and the office keeps no figures of its own on it. What it can do is tell you the dates the operator runs, what the guide has seen in past years without dressing it up as a forecast, and which of the three wide places is least dependent on one thing going right.
Is there a refund if the week goes the wrong way?
No. Weather is not a failure of the service, and the operator has still run everything it sold. Cancellation terms are the operator's own and are sent to you in writing before you commit, so you can read them cold. If a component the operator controls is dropped, that is a different matter and is handled by that operator directly, with this office pushing on your side.
Why is the island week twice the price of the delta week?
Because of what is inside the figure and where it is. Six nights on the island cover mountain guiding on wet ground, road transfers on the island itself, and rooms in a place with very few of them. Seven nights in the delta cover a boat, a village guesthouse and ground at a lower rate everywhere. Getting to the island is your own booking and sits outside the figure, as does your travel to either country.
Finish the sentence and a week gets reserved
Whatever the hour, what you send lands here and is read by a person, who replies inside one working day. Sending it binds you to nothing, and no sum is ever taken at this end.