Great Gap Year Hunt

lynzpower

If you are booking hostels - hostel bookers is 3% on quidco

Buy lonely planets/ other guidebooks off ebay/ amazon - you can get latest editions if you look hard enough.

Do avoid i-to-i . A freind of mine had a shocking experience with them in Costa Rica. She paid about 3k to stay in a homestay, full board, with the 1-to-1 support and was told a proportion of it would go to the turtle sanctuary.

the turtle sanctuary was financially stuffed, they had more than enough staff but no funding to keep going. My mate found out they get less than 20uds PP.

my mate didnt get a homestay ( which she obviously wanted, for language, and to make sure famiiy got a bit of money too) she was put in a basement garage with 2 others with hammocks hung from the ceiling. Someone came daily adn left a basket of bread and cheese by the door and that was it.

she complained to the I-to _i rep, at the airport leaving- ( they werent on site- or contactable at all throughout her stay) and requested compensation ( she was going to pay this direct to the turtle sancturary) and they wouldnt have any of it.

There are scores of experiences like these on the internet - do look befroe committing your money.

It infinately more expensive to buy tours here. Just buy them when you get there. thorntree forum on lonely planet is a fantastic resource, filled with info and you get quick answers too!

I did a 3 day trip to angel falls while i was in venezuela- it cost about 55 quid all in. same trip is 290 euros http://www.backpacker-tours.com/en/angel_falls.htm here, and I know there are only 2 companies that have camps in canaima, so its likely youd be booking with the above co who will broker it out to the 55 quid company.

theamazinggem

hey. i'm one of the few(?) who worked to pay for a year out, and just returned this june (oh im 27 by the way, it took aaaages).

my website is here www.offexploring.com/gemandlobsbigadventure and while it doesn't give you much in the way of tips and hints, it does tell you what you can do with £5000 in a year.

i've got some cracking recipes for stuff to cook yourself while going about, which was especially good in australia as nothing there is cheap.

in oz and nz one good thing if you're moving from place to place but staying still in between is http://www.standbycars.com.au/ which does very cheap rates (and give you petrol allowance) on campervans and so on. you can call up individual companies as well, each morning they get a list of vans that need taking back to the city they came from, and if you're going the same way you get it cheap. we did the Great Ocean Road from Adelaide to Melbourne in one and it was great, esp as camp sites are much cheaper than hostels!

also in oz all cities have their own market, and most of them do massive markdowns in the evening. a particularly good one is prahran market in melbourne, if you're staying somewhere even a week then a tray of chicken wings will go a long way.

you can earn decent money as an office temp, but (and while this is slightly dishonest, don't feel too bad, backpackers are ten a penny and they know it) don't tell the agency only going to be in town for a few weeks, anything under 3 months and they probably wont even look at you. having said that, a lot of them do "breakfast clubs" where you go in in the morning and they feed you (pretty well in some cases) and if a last minute call comes in you get sent out. i got a month's work that way.

in south america the best (and often only) way to get around is by bus. some buses are dodgy but on the whole they are improving, and the long distance buses in Argentina and Chile are better than a plane! you get food, a seat that reclines all the way and they're dirt cheap, especially in Argentina where unless you fly in with Aerolineas Argentinas they charge you 4% the price of a domestic flight for being foreign.... honestly!

open to questions on any of the places we went (see site), tho i didn't volunteer or work on a farm, so i can't tell you much about that, and nothing that i haven't heard from someone else...

theamazinggem

of course one of the most effective ways of going away on a budget is to choose where you go carefully. a quid goes a lot further in southeast asia than south america, and half way round the world further than in australia...

BigBouncyBall

theamazinggem wrote: »

hey. i'm one of the few(?) who worked to pay for a year out

I think thats a little unfair.

theamazinggem

BigBouncyBall wrote: »

I think thats a little unfair.

perhaps, though there wasn't any malice intended.

it was actually in response to the posts above saying all travellers were kids on their dad's credit cards. hence the (?) after the word few. having said that, in australia the gap year, well off teenager was the norm in the places we stayed. but then again in south america it was hardly that at all.

besides, even if the money was given to them to go, that's not for me to judge them on it - you can slate the parents perhaps for not teaching them the value of money, but then you have to applaud them for trying to expand their world view surely?

even i had to borrow towards the end of the trip, as we struggled getting work at first and so were 2 months of income down on the original plan. it's just how it goes.

in any case, i was demonstrating my position, in so far as it was different from that which had been discussed already, and did not intend to cause offence.

theamazinggem

also for the record, we had a really bad experience with GAP adventures on their Peru/Inca Trail/Bolivia trip. total rip off, terrible guides, couldn't give a monkeys about our experience. also no joy in complaining either.

michelle_y

I just back form a 6 weeks of Volunteering in one of the most remote areas in the whole of Himalayas. The place was the Vipassana valley, apparently being developed as a valley for mediators amidst the Himalayas. Its is the ladakh region of India and about 3 hours from Leh. I was doing construction work for building the mediation cells and also helping a local family in their farms. It was one of the most satisfying experience of my life. I was also given daily meditation lessons.

The program was the Vipassna valley Volunteer camp through Volunteer in India

You have got to be there to experience. The best part was that it was based in these most enchanting landscaped mountains with monasteries everywhere.