Reserve a January departure with a Kansas City travel agent, starting with the one date that runs once

Reserve a January departure with a Kansas City travel agent and you are working with four rows, three of which can move. Eight nights on Senja leave on 17 January and come back on the 25th, once this year, from $4,300 per person. The other three take a January start like any other week: ten nights across three parts of Palawan from $3,114, nine nights walking the cirques of Reunion from $3,188, eleven nights on Unguja and Pemba from $4,107. Half the notes arriving this month want the light coming back over a northern horizon; half want out of a Kansas City cold snap.

The seventeenth is fixed because the light is

The sun clears the sea horizon at that latitude around the 16th, and this departure sits one day behind it. By the 20th it is up from 10:40 to 13:20 and gaining close to ten minutes a day, so the last morning of the week runs nearly two hours longer than the first. Arrive a week earlier and the sun has barely returned; arrive a week later and the date has gone. It is held in a nine room guesthouse and four rooms over a landing shed, so a party of six takes half of it. The third Monday of January usually falls inside the eight nights, giving a working day back.

The first ten days still belong to the holiday calendar

Operators on both island trips price the turn of the year as one block from the third week of December, and the January figures above start when that block ends, generally after the fifth. The twelfth is a public holiday across the Tanzanian islands, kept by offices, banks and some ground handling. On Reunion the island's own school summer runs to the end of January, so the beds at Cilaos and the houses inside Mafate go to families from the shoreline below, and the refuge at 8,130 feet is one room of bunks that goes as a block or goes empty.

Cloud by ten, wind by one, four usable hours

Senja sits between 18 and 30 degrees at the quay, and the wind keeps the road swept and the gullies loaded. Reunion is in its wet half, with the basins filling with cloud by mid morning and the heaviest rain of that island's year falling now, which is why the walking days start before first light and the leader turns their order around the sky. In Palawan the northeast wind gets up soon after one, so the outriggers are loaded at six and away by seven.

Moving a week, and what each direction takes

For three of the four, a week either way is a real choice. Later in January puts you clear of the holiday block; February moves Palawan toward the demand around the lunar new year and Zanzibar into its hottest weeks, and leaves Reunion as it is until March. For the fourth there is no such thing as moving a week: there is going, or there is next winter. If your leave is already fixed to a fortnight, say so in the first note and the reply will name the ones that fit.

Nothing here is ours to sell twice. Third Coast Dispatch Bookings LLC works from the Kansas City metro, so your request goes to the firm that runs the week, the date is held while questions are settled, and that firm bills you on its own letterhead. It pays a commission at this end once you are home. The channel north to Pemba is carried by the operating company under its own license. Reaching a start point stays with you and is in none of the figures. Every note is answered within one business day. If January is wrong for your leave, look at the twelve months of the board instead; what happens between your note and a confirmed date is written out in order; and the note on changing a booking covers what can still be moved once a date is held.