Tips for Going Your Own Way

South America is an enormous continent. Some travellers are there for years and still live with the feeling that they saw nothing. So instead of treating those six months as a task list and moving from place to place, here’s a list of things you might not have thought to do, which can give your trip an interesting shade.

Volunteering

All across South America you’ll find a huge range of options for volunteering. Looking after animals, working in a hostel, helping a community or teaching English — take your pick.

On one hand volunteering forces a pause in the flow of the trip and it takes time, but it carries a lot of advantages: connecting to a local community and to everyday life, improving the language, a sense of giving and helping, picking up professional knowledge, and on top of that a kind of reset in the middle of a months-long run far from home.

How do I find somewhere to volunteer? There are plenty of sites in this space, and for a relatively token payment you can get in and contact a database of places looking for volunteers. Worth noting: you should start planning and getting in touch at least a month ahead, and for the sought-after places even earlier. These are two leading sites:

https://www.workaway.info/ https://www.worldpackers.com/

Beyond that, it’s very possible that along the way you’ll connect with a particular place and want to volunteer there — so don’t hesitate to ask. People are always glad of help. (See the Cuba side story.)

Concerts, sporting events and festivals

There’s no more enjoyable way to get to know locals — and to see people at their happiest, at their peak moments.

Before you arrive in a given country, try to look ahead and see whether an artist you know is playing. Ask locals, and even if you hear about something happening in town that you don’t necessarily know, it’s always worth trying. From my own experience I ended up at a folk festival, a tango festival and a jazz festival — different things I was less familiar with and less drawn to back home, but South Americans’ passion across every area of music surprises you again and again. Needless to say, reggaeton is an unforgettable experience in its own right.

Beyond that, sport — football above all — is a whole world in South America. The support from the fans and the sound coming off the stands are extraordinary, and even if you’re not a big sports fan, being at a football match in South America is an experience you won’t forget.

Connect with locals

You’ve come to travel a continent that is foreign and different in many ways, and sometimes, in all the chaos, we prefer the comfortable and familiar and find ourselves eating at McDonald’s and going to a techno party. And honestly? That’s completely natural. But on the other hand, don’t miss the chance during the trip to go out with locals — whether it’s someone working in the hostel or someone you met while out during the day. Try to build as many connections with locals as you can. That’s how you’ll discover their places, and how you’ll feel comfortable somewhere you wouldn’t necessarily have gone alone.

On top of that, locals mostly go to cheap places, so your budget drops significantly. And it often happens that you’ll meet, say, a Mexican in Peru — and then you can go and visit him in Mexico. Two birds with one stone.