Actually there are many ways available to budget travelers to travel for free or on a very low budget…apart from hitch-hiking and “camping” with a sleeping bag on the sidewalk, probably fun but not surely safe, many existing methods are based on reciprocal trust, desire for intercultural knowledge, and above all on the exchange of work or abilities…in this article I’m going to show you some sources on Internet that will enable you to have free room and board abroad. Among them, probably the best known is Couchsurfing: it is a well-known website that enables you to get in contact with locals who are willing to offer you a bed (if you are very lucky) or more probably a couch or even to share their own bed, in exchange of…well, nothing (theoretically)! I think this is a really amazing way of traveling, since you not only can avoid spending a lot of your travel budget on accommodation, you also can get to know the locals, join their activities, discover the place in a deeper way, and make new friends. But I have to admit it, it scares me a bit…I opened an account once and tried to contact some people in Prague, but there were almost only men available and some of them looked a bit creepy…finally, I was not feeling comfortable with that and I gave up. I’m not saying I won’t try it again or I don’t like the way it works, but for me it was not the right holiday for trying that. I’d love to hear the opinion of people (especially women) who do it and enjoy it, however, so if you do it and you read this, please show up in the comments ;)
So does anything exist that enables you to travel for free without having to sleep on a couch or in half of a bed (not really comfortable), that makes you feel comfortable with your hosts even if you are a woman traveling alone, that lets you do something concrete for the people that are hosting you and for the place you are visiting?
Yes, there is! And the main concept behind it, is the exchange of your work or abilities with board and meals from your hosts. There are 4 great websites which allow you to do so:
1) HELPX: this is probably the most famous and it is supposed to be the most used.
HelpX website
On this website, people who need some help with their jobs (usually organic farms, studs, b&b, hostels, families with kids or animals who need help…) post a message for HelpXers where they explain their offering and what kind of help they need. You can search for country and have a look at all the offers, but then if you want to contact someone you need to register, and to pay a fee of 29$ for 2 years of membership. There are tons of offers and the response rate is supposedly very high, but I found the site design very poor (especially if compared with Workaway, of which I’ll talk later in this article) and I had to search for offers by country (which is useful if you already know where you are going and you are looking for accommodation, but gets complicated if you want to find the perfect job and, based on that, decide where to go…as I did!).
2) WWOOF:
wwoof website
Staying for “World Wide Opportunities for Organic Farm”, this website works on the same principle of HelpX but it is strictly addressed to people who own a farm/want to work in it. So you won’t find other kind of jobs, as you would instead on the other websites. Moreover, WWOOF is a global organization that works being country specific: so if you want to join the community, you have to pay just for the country you want to go to. If you want to travel to a different place, you have to join a new community and pay for it. So, even if it probably works out very well, it was just not the right thing for me (nor for anyone who’s planning to travel to more than one country). I can’t say the exact fee since it changes from place to place, but it could be anything between 0$ and 72$.
3) VOLUNTEERSBASE:
Volunteersbase website
This is, as simply as possible, the only FREE alternative to the other websites described in this post. The idea is great, you don’t pay, you just look for what you like and contact the hosts…unfortunately there is still not much going on here, the offers are few and there are no feedback, let’s say it’s still beginning and it doesn’t have yet the basis the others have. But, ehi, it’s free, so my advice is: try this first! If you fail, you just go looking for other options, but if you find something, you will contribute in the growth of this amazing project!!!
4) WORKAWAY:
Workaway website
I put this at the end because I have to write more about it, since this is actually the website I chose for my holidays this year. I think this site is simply AMAZING: it has a great and clear design, beautiful pictures, simple rules, a lot of interesting job offers…I fell in love with it and with the concept behind all these volunteering communities, and after a long period scanning all the websites and trying to decide to which one pay the fee for, I chose this. So basically this is the only one I can give TRUE advices on, cause I have a membership with it only.
Let’s start from the basic: Workaway has a main difference with the fee stuff, cause you can choose between doing a single account (22$, 2 years membership, and you can link it with another workawayer if for a limited time you want to workaway with him/her) or a couple account (29$, same amount of time, but this is only valid for 2 people always traveling together on the 2 years membership time). I want to say something about this: I’m pretty sure you can cheat on it, but if you are thinking about trying it you’ll have to be smart, cause it seems like they have pretty good filters! Once I was contacting a host and trying to get information about his offering, and I asked a question about the possibility to have my boyfriend joining me there. I was not trying to cheat, actually, he just wasn’t sure he could come (in the end he doesn’t, actually). Well, a couple of hours later I received an email from the Workaway staff: they were kindly reminding me that I had to upgrade to a Couple account or to link mine to another Workawayer’s if I wanted to travel with someone. What can I say? They control it, as it should be, so take it into account :)
What can I say about Workaway then? I’d love to tell you how easy it has been to find an accommodation, how many offerings I had to deny, how quick the whole process was…but actually, nothing of this is true. Speaking honestly, this whole idea of working abroad in exchange for board and meals is great and I really love it, but the website simply doesn’t work well, and this is a real pity, especially if you consider that all the members have to pay a fee, so they should also have the money to improve it, don’t they? Some small bugs are related to the disorganization of the site (there is no way to know if an offering is new or 2 years old, or if the host needs help for a certain month or is full…), but actually the main problem is that most hosts never answer! I found myself writing up to 3 emails to certain hosts that I really liked, and they never came back to me in any way. This is really annoying, but surely it is not Workaway’s staff fault…it should be up to the hosts to know that if they post an insertion, then they will probably receive tons of emails and they need to be organized to answer to all (at least with a “sorry but we are not interested”).
That said, now I’m proud to say that I’VE FINALLY FOUND A HOST! :D Since the first moment I found out about this website, I knew that I really wanted 2 things: an open air-job, possibly with animals and in particular horses (it’s full of horse owners who need help out there!), and that I wanted to visit a place near the sea I’ve never been to. So I contacted probably around 30 hosts with these characteristics and in the end, after a lot of unanswered emails, many hosts who were already fully booked, some who answered the first time and then never again, and also one that initially was going to host me but then suddenly changed his mind and never answered again (yes, this happens too -.-)…well, now it seems like I found my place :)
So, in the end, the only advice I can really give you is to be patient: budget traveling is not simple but is possible, interesting and wonderful! And with these websites, even if obviously they are not perfect, it’s much more easy!
I’ll let you know soon about the actual Workaway experience…So stay tuned friends!
And if you are workawayers, volunteers, helpxers, whatever you may be…please tell me your experience! Give me some advices! Share with me your story as I did with you, I’ll be really grateful! :)