What is this volunteer thing?

I’m on a six-week holiday in Spain, mostly with “host families”. The way it works is that you contact a host in advance, discuss your mutual schedules, and hopefully agree on a type and amount of work in return for room and board. There are hosts all over the world and the work is equally varied. I found my first host for this trip on http://www.workaway.info and the second on http://www.helpx.net. I first did this in 2009 in Bulgaria and Italy and have found every host experience to be unique and rewarding. Living accommodations are not like a hotel because they depend on what hosts can provide but you get a unique insight to what life is like in other cultures and countries and you meet nice people!  

For me, the reason for doing work/travel is that I get to experience a faraway place from the perspective of a local family for a much longer period of time than the typical hotel stay and for a cost near zero. I also like to do something productive or physical every day. Host tend to live off the main tourist routes so I have had excuses to travel to unusual places, in one case a day’s train ride across a country where I couldn’t even read the alphabet. It’s all part of the adventure!

As a small example of the work available, I have gathered chestnuts and olives, cut, split and stacked firewood, repaired furniture, helped with light construction, baked bread, and weeded gardens in Bulgaria, Italy and Spain. 

If you are healthy and would like some adventure in your next holiday I recommend that you look at one of the above websites or find a non-profit society that accepts volunteers.

Picking olives with Claudio in Italy