Gap-year style travel - backpacking/volunteering for 2-3 months?

Does anyone have any experience with planning/researching a backpacking-type trip abroad?

I finally got a job offer (yay!) but the job won't start until April next year, so I'm looking into maybe trying to do some travelling for a couple of months before I start. I've been looking online at the BUNAC Work and Volunteering schemes, as well as various organised trekking and expedition sites, but I'm not really sure how to find the best/cheapest methods of travel and the safest ways to do it.

I will most likely be doing it alone, as all my friends are either doing PhDs/PGCEs or are desperately hanging onto their jobs, so I would prefer to go with an organised group rather than travel independently. However, I only have about £1,500 in savings right now and with rent and bills, I can't really save much more than £100 per month or so at the moment. The housing contract for my flat isn't up until December, so I'm currently thinking of going between January and March 2010. However, the ideal situation would be to move back to my parents' house in the next few weeks and start saving money towards a trip, but that all depends on whether I can get out of my tenancy agreement/find someone else to move in (and also on the job offer being made official as I still have to wait for the pre-employment checks to be carried out first).

The different options I've been looking at so far are:

- BUNAC Work Australia/New Zealand - probably what I would be most comfortable doing, but since they are Working Holidaymaker visas, I'm not sure if they're worth doing if I can only stay there 2-3 months (rather than 12 or 24 months).

- BUNAC Volunteer South Africa/Ghana/Cambodia/India/USA - these look good, although I'm not sure about the safety (both health and personal safety) of some of the countries. The Volunteer USA scheme involves spending a few weeks carrying out projects in the Grand Canyon and is the cheapest (about £300 plus flights/insurance/spending money etc.), but it says you have to be eligible for the VWP to do it. I'm not eligible to travel visa-free to the US anymore, but I should have a valid tourist visa by then (visa appointment is in October) - I don't know what that would mean for the scheme though.

- Rayleigh International Expeditions (India, Borneo, or Costa Rica and Nicaragua) - since I am over 24, I could only do this if I applied as a volunteer manager rather than just a volunteer.

I would love to go for the BUNAC Volunteer Costa Rica or Peru, but you need at least GCSE Spanish to apply and I only have French! The only Spanish I know is the few words I picked up when I spent 4 weeks in Guatemala and when I was in New Mexico  .

Other sites I've been looking at are www.workingabroad.com, www.statravel.co.uk, and www.gapyear.com, and I've just found www.crossculturalsolutions.org and www.originalvolunteers.co.uk

I would love to hear from anyone who has any experience with travelling/volunteering abroad, just so I can get more of a feel for it and an idea of how to go about planning a trip. Although I've travelled quite a bit, most of my experience has been in the US and Europe (apart from Guatemala) - staying with family/in hotels/motels in the US and camping/hostels in Europe .

Congratulations on the job!

I did several volunteer workcamps about 10 years ago, so my contacts might be dated. But I used this organization:

http://ivsgb.org/info/ [this is the GB site; I went through the US site]

and also got a lot of information from:

www.transitionsabroad.com

I joined an archaeological dig, built a playground for kids (which is where I met my husband!  ), built trails, and taught English.

This was awhile ago so I can't really speak for the current programs, but I had an amazing experience doing volunteer work. For me, the planning part was half the fun!

Best of luck to you!

have you considered WWOOF (http://www.wwoof.org/)?  my friend did this and had a fabulous experience...you just search around for where you want to go, what kind of work you'd like to do, and then set it up.  she did everything from traditional farm work to giving brewery tours at an organic brewery. 

congrats on your job!

Thanks, guys - I'll check out those websites too .

Hi,

My girlfriend (UK citizen) volunteered in Peru for three months in the summer of 2005 with a group called Mosoq Ayllu (it means "New Community" in Quechua, one of the languages spoken in the area).  She went by herself, and had a choice of living with other volunteers in a hostel-like accomodation, or living with other volunteers with a host family, which is what she decided to do.

They had Spanish lessons for a few hours each day, and spent a few hours each day volunteering at a local orphanage with really young children (1 - 3 years old) or a community center where the kids were a little older (8 - 15).  The people who ran the program also took them on day trips to see various local sights.  She raved about how much fun she had and how rewarding it was.

I went to Peru for a week to visit, and it really did look like a lot of fun.  The host family was friendly and welcoming, as were the kids at the community center, and everyone else I met in Peru, for that matter.

At any rate, I'll stop raving about it and give you the website:

http://www.mosoq-ayllu.org.pe/

Good luck whatever you decide to do.

Carl

Hey

If you're wanting to go to Costa Rica or Peru you might want to check out i-to-i (http://www.i-to-i.com). I've just finished uni and am researching a gap year at the minute - came across these and they have lots of projects in South America that don't need you to speak Spanish. I'm thinking about doing Sea Turtle conservation in Costa Rica - looks amazing.

Good luck!

Hey

If you're wanting to go to Costa Rica or Peru you might want to check out i-to-i (http://www.i-to-i.com). I've just finished uni and am researching a gap year at the minute - came across these and they have lots of projects in South America that don't need you to speak Spanish. I'm thinking about doing Sea Turtle conservation in Costa Rica - looks amazing.

Good luck!

Thanks - I popped into STA Travel yesterday and picked up some of their brochures (I think they have i-to-i as their partner) . I'm thinking more about South America than Central America at the moment as I visited Central America in 2007 .

I'm still considering the volunteering idea, but some of the tours advertised in the STA brochures look really cool - there's one that is really interesting me at the moment: the Altiplano Expedition, which is 31 days, starting in Lima, Peru and finishing in La Paz, Bolivia. It's exciting to me because my masters degree research involved analysing seismic activity beneath the Puna and Altiplano Plateaux (Bolivia/Chile) and it would be really cool to actually visit the region . Only problem with it at the moment is the cost (almost £1400, not including the international flights and most meals, but including all other transport, accommodation and trips).