twenty-seven trips in one order, five rungs, one question

Reserve a vacation package from New Orleans, twenty-seven trips arranged in one order

The Pine Gazette reserves twenty-seven trips, from $1,951 to $6,545 a person, set out in one order by how much of each trip somebody else runs while you are on it. At the near end a car meets you at arrivals and a guide sits down to breakfast with you; at the far end you get the permit, the ranger and the weekly boat, and the fortnight between them is yours to fill. Every request is answered within one business day, and the company that operates your trip bills you direct.

Send a booking requestThe Pine Gazette answers every request within one business day.

To reserve a vacation package from New Orleans through The Pine Gazette is to choose a point on a single line. Twenty-seven trips sit on that line, from $1,951 to $6,545 a person, and the order measures one thing only: how much of the trip somebody else is running while you are on it. At the near end a driver stands at the arrivals barrier holding a card with your name on it, and a guide sits down opposite you at breakfast. At the far end there is a permit in your name, a ranger at a gate, a boat that goes out once a week, and a fortnight between those fixed points that nobody has filled in for you.

No rung outranks another, and the ladder is not a scale of quality or of money: a quota permit, a ranger and the single bed at the head of a trail cost what they cost, wherever they sit in the order. What changes along the order is how many decisions come back to you, and how many hours in a week somebody who knows the road is standing beside you.

Everything met and guided

Somebody is waiting at arrival, a guide is with the party most days, and every transfer and entry is held in advance.

Upper Mustang, NepalSomebody reserves this because they want to walk into a valley that cannot legally be entered alone, and they do not want to be the person assembling the permit, the crew and the road transport to get there.14 nights, from $4,405 per person The Bale Mountains, EthiopiaSomebody who wants the plateau at first light with a person beside them who knows which valley the wolves worked yesterday, and who has no interest in arguing over a vehicle in Goba at half past six in the morning.11 nights, from $5,429 per person Tusheti, GeorgiaA person booking this wants to be met at arrival and handed along, in order, to people who drive that road for a living, and to spend six clear days somewhere the wheeled route physically ends.9 nights, from $4,585 per person Karakalpakstan, UzbekistanSomebody booking this wants a landscape that changed inside one human lifetime, and wants another party to carry the permit, the fuel, the water cans and the decision about which track to take.10 nights, from $3,487 per person Tana Toraja, SulawesiSomebody booking this wants to be met at the arrivals door and then decide nothing for twelve days, in a place where the thing worth going for is a private family event you cannot walk into by yourself.12 nights, from $4,516 per person The Rupununi, GuyanaSomebody reserves this because they want the Rupununi without doing any of the arranging, since a third of what makes these thirteen days work happens over two way radio or through a person standing in the village.13 nights, from $6,545 per person

Guided in parts

A guide for the days that need one and nobody at all for the rest. Rooms and transfers are still arranged end to end.

Kyushu, JapanSomebody reserving this wants the four awkward days handled and the rest of the twelve left alone, in a place where bathing runs on house rules and getting them wrong in front of a room of strangers is the part they would rather not risk.12 nights, from $4,574 per person The Aeolian Islands, ItalySomebody booking this wants the two awkward pieces, the crossings and the volcano evening, taken out of their hands, and the other days left blank.10 nights, from $3,603 per person The southern Dodecanese, GreeceA person booking this wants the two hard days solved by somebody who knows where the path goes, and the other nine to belong entirely to them.11 nights, from $3,632 per person The Apuseni, RomaniaSomebody booking this wants the underground days run by a person who does that for a living, and the rest of the week left completely alone.9 nights, from $3,661 per person The Kvarner islands, CroatiaSomebody booking this wants the boat day and the beds settled by a person who does that for a living, then wants the other eight mornings to start whenever they start.10 nights, from $3,690 per person Sheki and the Greater CaucasusSomebody reserving this wants a person who knows the ground on the days where knowing it changes the outcome, and five days when nobody tells them what time to be downstairs.9 nights, from $3,719 per person

Arranged, but nobody travels with you

Every room, train, boat and entry is booked before departure. No guide anywhere, and nothing to work out on the ground.

Friesland, the NetherlandsSomebody booking this wants the week settled and the days open, a bed waiting in each town and nobody expecting them anywhere at nine in the morning.8 nights, from $3,748 per person The west coast of JutlandSomebody books this because they want the nine nights already solved on paper and then to be left alone with a wind, a tide table and a bicycle.9 nights, from $3,777 per person The Collio, FriuliSomebody reserves this because they want nine doors already open at named hours with growers who take visitors only by arrangement, and then want to be left alone with a map.8 nights, from $3,806 per person The Sierra de Gata, SpainSomebody books this because they want all nine days to be theirs from breakfast onward, without losing the first two of them working out how to reach a village of eight hundred people that has two buses a week.9 nights, from $3,835 per person The Pelion, GreeceA person reserving this wants the beds, the seats and the water day settled on paper first, and then ten days in which nobody tells them when to be downstairs.10 nights, from $2,864 per person

A base and a vehicle

The office books the base, the car and the one or two things that have to be held ahead. The days themselves are empty.

The Causses and the TarnSomebody booking this wants a kitchen, a set of keys and nine mornings in which nobody has already decided what the day is.9 nights, from $2,893 per person The Mecklenburg lakesA person asking for this wants a house key, a set of car keys and a mooring line, and then to decide over breakfast whether the day goes north to open water or south into the locks.8 nights, from $2,922 per person The Burren, County ClareSomebody booking this wants a bed that stays put and a set of car keys, and wants to decide at the breakfast table whether the day belongs to the coast road or the high pavement.7 nights, from $1,951 per person The Cambrian mountains, WalesSomebody books this because they want to stand in a kitchen at half past eight with a map and the weather and choose, rather than be told at breakfast where the group is going.8 nights, from $2,980 per person The Adirondack High PeaksSomebody booking this wants a bed and a set of keys already arranged so that at half past five in the morning the only open question is which trailhead the car points at.7 nights, from $2,463 per person

Only the hard parts

A permit, a ranger, a boat with one sailing a week, the single bed there is. Everything else is the traveller's own.

Vesteralen, NorwaySomebody reserving this wants six days on which nothing can reach them and no hour of the day belongs to a stranger with a clipboard.9 nights, from $3,108 per person Aysen, Chilean PatagoniaSomebody reserving this wants the three things that cannot be arranged from a laptop at one in the morning, and wants the other nine days left blank.12 nights, from $3,067 per person Altai Tavan Bogd, MongoliaSomebody books this because the permit, the vehicle and the horses are the three things in that valley that cannot be sorted out after arrival, and they want the rest of the eleven nights left open.11 nights, from $1,960 per person The Kaokoveld, NamibiaSomebody books this because they want the valley to themselves at six in the morning, with nobody to wait for and nobody to follow.12 nights, from $2,845 per person The Pamir, TajikistanSomebody booking this wants the two things that stop a Pamir trip before it starts, a regional permit and a driver who knows which river crossing is running this week, and then wants to be left alone with the rest of it.13 nights, from $2,415 per person

Breakfast with a guide, and breakfast with a telephone number

The gap between the first rung and the third shows itself at eight in the morning. On rung one there is already somebody at the table. The shape of the day is said out loud, the walk is moved forward an hour because the wind gets up by eleven, the vehicle arrives where it was promised, and when a road is closed the person at the table finds the other road while you finish your coffee. On rung three the morning looks identical and the table is yours alone. Every part of that day was reserved weeks earlier and the confirmations are in your hand: a driver at eleven, an entry time at two, a room in the next town. When a road is closed you have a number to ring, and the firm that runs the trip answers it from inside the country you are standing in. That is a genuine service. It is also a different one, and the figure reflects the difference.

Rung two splits the week on purpose. A guide comes for the days that need one, the pass crossing, the site where the labels are in a single language, the coast road where hiring a car would be a poor idea. The rest of the days have nobody in them at all. Rung four hands over the two things hard to judge from four thousand miles away, a base you did not have to gamble on and a vehicle standing outside it, then stops. The diary is empty and stays empty.

Rung five is the one most often misread. It buys the parts that cannot be bought at the door: a numbered permit against a quota, a ranger required to walk in with you, a place on the boat that sails on Tuesday and on no other day, the one hut at the top of the valley. Everything between those fixed points is yours to invent, which is the whole appeal of it.

What the starting figure has already paid for

Every price here is a floor: the figure for two people sharing a room, quoted per person, in the months when a route is quiet rather than in the three weeks everybody wants. Season moves it. Party size moves it, since a room used by one traveller carries a supplement the operator sets. Length moves it too, because several of these itineraries run at two lengths and the shorter one drops a stage instead of shortening every day.

Against each trip there are two lists, and the second is the useful one. The first says what the figure already contains: nights, ground transfers, permits and gate fees, the meals that are genuinely included, the days a guide is present. The second says what sits outside it, with a dollar range on every line, so that a tip, a hired sleeping bag, a hot shower in a lodge and a local data card are numbers you see before you decide.

Rippled wet sand at low tide under a thin film of water

Air travel is outside every figure on the ladder, at every rung. You arrange your own way to the start, in your own name, and no leg of it is arranged in this office. Where an itinerary crosses water, the firm operating it holds that passage under its own licence and sells it to you inside its own trip.

The firm that runs the trip, and the office that holds the reservation

Pine Gazette Bookings LLC works from an office in New Orleans, LA, and operates none of the twenty-seven itineraries itself. There is no fleet behind it, no block of rooms, no boat and nobody guiding on its payroll. It puts your dates in front of the firm that runs the trip on the ground, settles the details in writing, and holds the reservation under your name until that firm confirms it. Billing comes from the operator, in its own name, straight to you. Nothing is paid in this office and no card number is asked for or kept; the operator pays a commission here once you are home.

One consequence of that is worth reading twice. The terms that bind you, the deposit date, the balance date and the day a change starts to cost money, belong to the operator, and they differ from rung to rung. Rung five terms are usually the strictest, because a permit issued in your name against a quota rarely moves to another week. All of it is set out at the cancellation terms in full, in the operator's own wording.

Deep moss and low berry plants underfoot, seen from directly above

Starting one, and what to put in the first message

A month, a rough party size and the width of your window is enough to open a file. From that, the sequence at how a request becomes a reservation begins: a written figure against your dates, a hold placed with the operator, a reservation confirmed in your name. Every request is answered within one business day, on +1 (504) 832-6194 or by message to bookings@thepinegazette.com. Should mail to that address fail, corrections@thepinegazette.com reaches the same two people.

If you already know your rung, name it. If the rung is the question, say which of the two mornings, the guide at the table or the number in your pocket, sounds more like a vacation. The five rungs are set out one at a time at the five rungs side by side, common questions are answered at the questions this office is asked most, and a figure against your own dates starts at request a trip quote 24/7.

Send a booking request

This form takes booking requests 24 hours a day. A person reads it and answers within one business day. Sending it is not a reservation, it costs nothing, and this office will not telephone or text you unless you ask it to.