The Kimberley, east Greenland or Patagonian Argentina, where you reserve a $6,880 vacation package

The $6,880 rung, and the three or four departures standing on it

Everything below is priced at $6,880 a head with two of you sharing a room. They are set out in no order of merit, because there is none to give.

Set the three side by side

The Kimberley is twelve nights of sandstone country, gorges that hold water all year and distances that swallow whole days. East Greenland is ten nights at Scoresby Sund, the deepest fjord system on earth, with time spent on the tundra above it. The Santa Cruz steppe is eleven nights of wind, a very large icefield and ranch houses a long way from anything. They share a figure and a scale of emptiness, and nothing else. One is hot and red. One is cold, gray and blue. One is pale gold, flat and blown sideways for most of the day. The office does not tell people which to take, and it will not call one of them the pick of the rung. It keeps no order of preference and no favorite. Give the office your month, since none of the three are possible in every season, and it will describe how each one moves.

Nothing sits above this figure

This is the last rung on the list. There is no next figure to move up to, so the honest version is that these limits stay. $6,880 does not buy a private aircraft, a helicopter day or a room anyone would call luxurious. It buys a long trip to somewhere hard to reach, run by a company that works there. Below this rung sits $5,260, with Guyana, Alaska and the Yukon on it, and the office does not present that as a lesser thing. 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 movement on water is part of a trip, the local operating company runs it and says so in the confirmation. Weather governs all three. Days get lost, and the operator's terms explain what happens when they do.

Deposits, dates and who holds the money

Deposits on this rung are set by the operating companies. Argentina asks twenty five percent at reservation. The Kimberley operator asks fifty. Greenland asks the full amount, because the season is short and the company commits to beds and staff a year ahead. None of that money comes here. This office takes no payment at all, holds no card details and runs no checkout page. You are invoiced by the operator itself, and this desk is paid its commission once you are home. Dates matter more here than anywhere else on the list. The Kimberley runs May to September, Greenland July to early September, the Santa Cruz steppe November to March. The Greenland season is about eight weeks long, which is a fact about ice and not a reason to rush. Send your dates and the office will come back in writing with the price, the deposit and the cancellation deadline.