North America 2 - click here for 'Overview'

Editor's Pick Award

Our Editors awarded this travel blog for providing relevant information that may be useful and inspiring for other travelers.

One thing that I have learnt while travelling is that the thing about helping people, in any substantial way, is that it tends to take place in the context of other people helping people and, well, the thing about people helping people is that they are the kind of people that, in the future, are likely to help again. Now not wanting to apply any Machiavellian angle to acts of charity (a phenomenon which PR machines have unfortunately become expert) or in anyway belittle the friendships from which I have received such charity, it is when travelling the world that this particular gem of truth becomes very beneficial to the kind of people who are inclined to help people.

Confused? Let me explain.

Before travelling to the Americas my girlfriend and I agreed that we would spend upwards of 4 to 5 months volunteering in Guatemala. By doing this we hoped for a few things: to experience the country in a way that was helping, rather than adversely effecting, the environment and local people; to actually get to know real people and become a part of their lives - rather than experience the country as if through the windows of a passing train; to spend a substantial amount of time with people with whom we would be forced to practice our Spanish; to live cheaply and to make friends. At the conclusion of our volunteer work we had achieved all of the above with one added benefit. Having made friends with volunteers from the US and advised them that we would be visiting their country at the conclusion of our volunteering they, being the kind of people that help people, invited us to stay with them.

This factor combined with the fact that my girlfriend (possessing a greater degree of friendship tenacity than myself) has a network of friends that spans the globe, including the US (friends who are people who help people), meant that, despite travelling in the US for six weeks and four days there was only one cold evening in Chicago and three hot nights in Miami in which we paid for our accommodation. Now the cheapest hostel or hotel room for two people will cost, on average about $50 a night in the US. Six weeks is 42 nights. We thus saved ourselves approximately US$2,150 (AUS$2,866).

In addition to this, the fact that we stayed with friends, and in one case a friend of a friend, meant that, from a tourism perspective, in each city we were provided with quality accommodation (in some cases luxury), a guide (or many) to the haunts and quirks hidden in the cities labyrinthine alleys and passageways and on many occasions the use of a car. This combined with quality conversation (with our friends and friends of our friends) gave us a rose-coloured lens through which to view the country while experiencing it in a way that, while maybe not capturing its essence (or the multi-faceted complexities of a superpower with a 300 million strong population), was lots of fun. I strongly believe that had we paid that US$2,150 (or more for that matter) the experience would not have come anywhere near to being as good as the one we had.

That said, this leg of our journey was not one in which we engaged in a great deal of tourist activities. What follows is thus more an account of my personal experiences than any kind of resource for future US travellers.

Apologies.