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hi

going by your budget being in £ I'll assume your starting point is the UK....you'll probably expect to pay approx 1000 on return flights plus travel insurance, vaccinations and other preparartion costs.....leaving approx 5000 for travel.....this would amount to enough for approx 5 months travel on a budget (depending on which countries you want to go to)....you say you want to soak up each country you visit...than i suggest going to no more than 3 countries espcially if you plan to spend any meaningful time volunteering. you probably need to make a decision as to what your priority for the trip is, spending months volunteering or travelling? if you want to volunteer do your research....many travellers hope to volunteer in order to save money but this is very often not the case as a payment may be required.

in terms of giving idea's of where to go.....more info is needed

• have you any must see sights/must do activties
• any ideas of type of volunteering you want to do.......conservation, wildlife, orphanges, teaching etc etc

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Agree with ger...do you want to travel or volunteer?

You haven't got enough time to do both.And if you want to see all those countries you haven't got enough time to volunteer as well.....unles you only want to do a day or two here or there.

You will also pay for these experiences...don't think volunteering is a good way to save money..it isn't!

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Hey Ger, Lucapal

Thanks for the replies.

GER

Yeah, I'll be starting and ending in the UK.

Budget – I’m current budget is £ 6k but I should have £8,000 (maybe more?) by March. I’m starting a 2nd job in a couple of weeks.

Travel/ Volunteering – I’d like to do a mix. I was thinking of maybe starting my travels by volunteering for a month to help me adjust to everything, meet you new people and build a little confidence. Peru seems a good place to start as I’d like to go to Machu Picchu (obvious I know but it interests me).

I understand volunteering isn’t a completely free option and I don’t want to give my money to do a ‘Travel agent’ style company. I’d want as much of my money to go to the cause as possible. Globalteer www.globalteer.org/ and Workaway www.workaway.info/ appear to be decent options.

I’m interested in conservation, wildlife but I won’t rule out volunteering with children.

I’m happy to work along the way for free accommodation and contributing and learning new skills. I don’t just want to go miles away to get drunk in bars and do only tourist stuff.

I have some friends who have been travelling but pretty much all of it was organised by one company and they didn’t really do anything for themselves. I can’t see the point in that and I don’t want to travel in a bubble if that makes sense?

After your reading your reply, I realised it was naïve of me to think I could cover it all in a few months and not be rushing around on the time. I think I was a little over excited!

Apart from Machu Picchu. The Salt Flats in Bolivia s looks amazing! I’d like to try and see some wildlife as well.

LUCAPAL

Yeah, that's a very good point. I'm thinking maybe a month or two of volunteering and the rest travelling around.

Overall I know I need to do a lot more reading/ research and focus on it. I only decided yesterday after many months being undecided to go for it! J

There is an STA Travel near me so I’m going to make an appointment for a chat with them in the near future and seek some advice.