To start this post, I am gifting you with this sarcastically amazing picture of me, totally ready for Alaska. I’ve been back to my »home » country for 7 months now. During these months, i’ve been living as if I were travelling, which means that i’ve been living in a hostel, working a few hours a week in exchange of a place to live. Yes, you can do that even when you’re in another country! Did you know about this way of travelling ? Many hostels work that way and there are a bunch of platform that are designed exactly for volunteering abroad in exchange of accomodations and/or meals.
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Here are 2 that i use a lot :
Workaway - Travelers : This website allows you to find any kind of work through the world. Whether it’s hostel work, farm work, helping in a family, working with animals, name it ! You can create your own profile where you can talk a little bit about yourself and your skills. You’ll also be able to read about hosts and see the reviews that other workawayers left to help improve the community. There is a big workaway community where you can find fellow travelers near you, to travel with them or ask about tips of the area. Read blog posts about workaway, but also all kind of tips regarding travelling and working abroad. They also have a foundation where they financially help families with small businesses who don’t have acces to local finance. There is a small yearly fee for the membership. The price vary depending on your country of residence. For me it’s about 30$ CAD, I have been using it for 3 years now and it is SO worth it.
- Hosts : Whether you’re a small family, a small business, a yoga retreat, a hostel or someone who just bought a house on a great land and needs a hand, workaway is a good option for you. In exchange for some meals and/or a place to stay, you can get free help from motivated people all around the world. There are some rules of the community to respect to be a registered workaway host and also a small membership fee. Great opportunity to meet some people from all over and get your projects done. Of course you have to stay open minded when you use that kind of platform to host people in your home or business.
HelpX- Helpx is not as intuitive as workaway, but there is still a big community of people using that website. It’s also a platform where you can find accomodation in exchange of a few hours of help per weeks. This website is really good because it offers the same kind of help as workaway, but cheaper, since it is a 2 years membership. A lot of hosts that are on workaway also use helpx. It’s not as esthetic as workaway, but it goes straight to the point. If you’re only looking for a place to volunteer and you don’t need to read blog posts or be part of a foundation or contact fellow travelers, if you’re all set with that, than HELPX is for you.
Alright so where were we ? Oh yes, so i’ve been back to Canada for 6 months after almost 2 years in Europe. My girlfriend arrived to the country and we’ve been preparing our next departure. My Girlfriend Being from France, but in Canada for a few months, she really wanted to visit the other countries that are on the American continent. So she felt like going to Central and/or South America after her 6 months tourist visa.
One day, I was at work and there was a book from The New York Times called »36 hours USA & CANADA WEST. I work in a Spa and it’s so chill that sometimes you have time to read a book. So I started reading out of curiosity and a page caught my attention more than the others. ALASKA. Ok. I was going to Alaska. That’s what I wanted and that’s what I was gonna do. So I came back home (the hostel where i live in a dorm with thousands of roommates…) and I told my upper bunk neighbour (a.k.a my girlfriend) about my new plan. She was not hyped about alaska… It’s ok, I get it… Alaska is not THE DESTINATION. I mean it’s cold, it’s wild and it’s quite unknown. But I was going to alaska with or without her (but i really wanted her to come…hihi). So i started dreaming out loud of my dear Alaska and she ended being quite thrilled about Alaska too.
BUT THEN AN EVEN BETTER AND COOLER IDEA CAME. We were gonna buy a Camper van and roam the Americas from ALASKA to PATAGONIA. That’s like minimum 20 000 kilometers… Are we crazy or what ? Well we’ve got only one life to live ya’know. So we started working on that Idea and getting a bunch of information on the different countries that we were gonna cross. We knew we were going to do a lot of working exchange while travelling so we started looking at the opportunities through the americas. We decided on an approximative date, a budget and started to go on a DREAM CAMPER HUNT.
We’re still hunting… But i’ll make another post on all the steps that we wen’t through to decide what type of camper we are going to get. For now, the only thing that is decided is that we are going to leave around May. We are going to depart from Montreal, Qc, Canada and detour towards Florida, USA to see some of our friends on the way. From there we are going to cross the United States towards British Columbia, Canada and stay there maybe a Month? And THEN, STRAIGHT TO ALASKA.
That’s all that we have planned for now. I’ll keep you up to date when we move and when we decide our directions. We don’t know if we’ll get aaaaaalllll the waaayyy to USHUAIA, argentina, but we know we are heading that way and feel zero pressure at all to achieve that point. I Am sure we will get to Central America and looking forward to it. We want to simply enjoy and find the best way to match our travels with our personnal projects and goals (more info about that coming in my about page). I’ll let you know when we have our camper. Stay tuned to follow our adventure, for tips on road tripping these parts of the world and for a post about our search for our dream house on wheels and our final decision.
Much love! Thank you for reading me,
see you soon!
Mielo
☼ The anxious traveler ☼ 