Little is known about the nature of the real time tourist experience and immediate satisfaction at tourist sites. Yet, unpredictable and haphazard moments of travellers make up any tourist experience and it is these tourist moments that often end up being most satisfying in tourists’ minds. This paper describes a study in which an attempt is made at understanding immediate conscious satisfaction of tourists. Twenty in-depth interviews were conducted with a group of study abroad Australian university students immediately following their visit to a heritage site in Spain. It is shown that the tourists’ near immediate conscious satisfaction is characterised by challenge-skill balance, total concentration, autotelic (intrinsically rewarding) events, time transformation and the related themes of mindfulness, object focus, personal experience, calm/tranquility and discovery.