What would you pay for this experience? Sitting in the comfort and safety of your everyday life, staring at an invoice itemizing airline tickets, transfers, taxes and accommodation. How do you rationalize the trade in currency against your first intimate encounter with a fully grown adult lion - on his turf (literally), in the REAL world where every day is a fight for survival?
How do you put a value against hours (time stands still on safari, so it is virtually impossible to measure how many) riding the uneven ground in the back of a jeep through an endless wilderness. You will never want to visit a zoo again, as nothing will come close to seeing, smelling and experiencing the majesty of nature untouched. You will never feel the enormity of your insignificance as you do against the backdrop of this perfect creation.
The travel industry has done its best to sell the intangible. It is a big leap of faith to buy something you cannot touch, test or try beforehand; and once experienced, remains only in the hearts, minds and memory cards (and sometimes credit cards) of the consumer.
I believe the marketing folks at Mastercard hit pay dirt when they devised the "priceless" campaign. However, whilst this campaign worked wonders for their brand recognition, and was adopted as a social tag-line for anything cool, I wonder how much it really assisted in selling the value of investment in real "money can't buy" life experiences.
So we focus on the tangible in an attempt to rationalize that which cannot be rationalized. We add up the elements in hope that the sum of the parts will explain the whole. My rationalization went something like this - "OK so the airfare is x - well it is a long way - nothing really we can do about that. Subtracting the airfare, take the subtotal and divide by the number of days, for a per day cost (quick suck in of breath) OH MY! OK, well a Sheraton hotel would normally cost x, that fancy hotel we went to for our anniversary cost xx, and this includes all meals, so at a nice restaurant that would be yx3, and then there is the touring (which having never been on safari before I completely did not get) so I guess that would be like two half day city tours (so wrong), and then there is the sheet-towel-thread-count (insert voice of Homer Simpson but replace "donuts" with "thread count") so calculating the quotient multiplied by the number of threads..."
You get the idea.
In the end I chose to hold my breath and sign the check and have faith that my research and knowledgeable travel consultant would deliver an experience that would be greater than the sum of its parts.
Africa was. For me, an experience beyond my wildest dreams and comprehension (and I have traveled the globe since a babe in arms). I will never look at an image of a lion again without remembering that first incredible encounter, or the hours that disappeared as we sat silently alongside, watching the mother cats playing with their cubs, grooming and caring, as we would for our own children. Or the moment in the jeep as the bull elephant, swinging his trunk and trumpeting his displeasure, gave us the evil eye, and we temporary travelers suggested to our guide (with more than 20 years experience in this very park - who knew each of these animals by name) that perhaps we should move along. Like somehow we - with all of our worldly knowledge would know more than this man who has lived here his whole life! And how he acknowledged our suggestion with such patience and grace. Priceless.
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