Field Notes · Method
What a buffer day is worth
The day you did not book is the one that decides whether you see the thing. Fog in Greenland, a convoy in the Danakil, a ferry in the Faroes, the alert level on a volcano: A Thousand Trips puts a number on the spare day, and the number is large.
Every place on this site has a list of what can go wrong, and most of the entries are not dangerous; they are late. The second vehicle has not arrived. The fog has closed the airport. The ferry to the puffins is not sailing. The alert level went to three overnight. The glacier road opens on Thursday. None of these hurt anyone. All of them cost a day, and the trips that are ruined by them are the ones that had no day to give.
Putting a number on it
A Thousand Trips runs your plan a thousand times with the weather, delay and cancellation probabilities for the place and the month, and reports how many of the thousand completed the plan. Run it for Ilulissat in July with five days and no buffer, and the completion rate sits around three in ten: the fog is the reason. Add one buffer day and it climbs to about seven in ten. Add two and it passes nine in ten. The same shape appears in the Faroes, the Danakil, Tanna and the Icelandic highlands, with different numbers.
The value of the day is the difference between those rates multiplied by what the trip cost you. A day in Greenland costs a few hundred euros. The trip cost a few thousand. The buffer day is the cheapest insurance on the itinerary, and it is the one line most people cut.
Where it goes
At the end. A buffer day in the middle of the trip is a rest day with a different name, and if the weather is fine it becomes a wasted one. A buffer day before the flight home absorbs whatever the weather cancelled earlier: the boat that did not sail on Tuesday sails on Friday. The second buffer, if the budget allows one, goes at the start, for arriving late into the fog with a guided day booked for the morning.
What to do with it if nothing goes wrong
The best day of the trip, usually. It is the day with no plan, when you walk back to the icefjord alone or sit in the café in Tórshavn watching the rain move across the harbour, and it is the day people describe afterwards when they say the place got under their skin. The model books it for the weather; the traveller gets it for free.
Questions people ask
Where should the buffer go?
Before the flight home, where a lost day costs an activity rather than the connection. A second one at the start protects against arriving late into the fog.
What if I cannot afford the extra day?
Then choose a place with a lower cancellation rate for your month, which the comparator and A Thousand Trips both show. A tight plan in the Faroes in October is a coin toss.
