 Hi everyone! I hope you are doing well wherever you are. This is Melika. I have been traveling and volunteering around Latin America for the last two and a half years. Right now I'm in a small village called Jai Balito by Lake Atitlan in Guatemala. I've been staying in this cabin for the last three months, house-sitting and pet-sitting. So in the last video I talked about volunteering, different types of volunteering, and I introduced you some websites where you can find volunteer opportunities all around the world. One of these websites was called Woof.net, Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms. Today I want to talk about traveling on a budget and how to woof while traveling on a budget. As you may know, the main cost of traveling goes on accommodation and food. When you volunteer, you work part-time a day, mainly five hours a day, five days a week in exchange for accommodation and food. After the first weeks of volunteering, I realized I don't actually need a lot of money to travel. So many people work all year long to be able to travel two weeks per year and they always ask people like me, how do you do it? How do you manage financially to volunteer for time and travel full time? Well, travel is not a matter of money. It never was. It's a matter of courage. And people work back home to save a lot of money to spend it on accommodation and food, whether you can volunteer, work on organic farms, and woof and exchange your knowledge and skills for accommodation and food. You learn and get a lot more apart from that. So you work on the way and you don't work with such a thing like money. You just exchange your knowledge and you get accommodation and food. You do have enough free time to see whatever that you want to see within the country. You work only part-time a day, so even you have enough time to work on your own projects. I work online, so so many people work on the way while traveling. So you can volunteer and work and you can volunteer and at the same time see whatever that you want to see within the country. So apart from accommodation and food, another main cost is transportation. And this really depends on where you are traveling because in different countries, transportation has different costs. Some countries like Brazil are as big as a continent and it's very far and expensive to get from one city to another. And some countries like small countries in Central America, you can get for four hours from the Caribbean to the Pacific. How much money you need actually depends on where you are traveling and how long you're traveling there and what kind of trip you're doing. Another thing that I want to mention is the purpose of your trip. A tourist stays within their comfort zone and they go and see all the popular sites, but a traveler really wants to blend in with the locals, try their food, learn their language. And while volunteering, you're doing all that and at the same time your living expenses are much lower. Before you travel, you really have to see what's the purpose of your trip because it really does affect your costs and what you want to see, how much do you want to move within the country. And about personal items, like I don't buy any souvenirs. My souvenirs are the memories and the experiences that I get from every country and like the photos and the videos that I get wherever I go. So, so many people spend a lot of money on souvenirs which that's not a problem, but before you start traveling when you want to manage your budget, you really have to think of that. Like how much personal items do you need or do you want to get when you're traveling. How do you know how much money you need while woofing? Well, as I mentioned before, this really depends on location, where you are traveling to. Some countries are way more expensive than the other ones. And how long you're traveling there? And how long are you woofing in that country? How long your accommodation and food is covered while being in that country? And then you just have to get with yourself and as I mentioned before with the purpose, see what else you want to see within the country and search more about the transportation of where you are located in the country, to other parts that you want to see in your free time or in the weekends or the personal items if you want to buy some souvenirs, if you want to get some personal items or food. So we can just search all that and just get an idea of how much your costs will be while you're traveling within that country. I really recommend connecting with the locals to find out how to make the most of your money. Sometimes you want to see a place like for example visit a volcano and you get to a local and the local knows a cheaper way or like a secret way to get to that place or even he says like no that's so touristic let's go to another place that I know and then you just go with the flow and explore so many places that not so many people go. So I really highly recommend connecting with the locals. How is woofing worldwide and traveling slow more sustainable? Of everything that we do while traveling, flying has the largest carbon impact. By traveling slow and for a longer amount of time instead of visiting multiple countries in a short time we reduce our flight emissions. I got to know this when I was traveling in Bolivia it has been five months since I was traveling in South America and I was like okay as long as I can I will try to stop flying. I mean just use buses and trains instead of plane as long as I can because as you know I need a visa to visit every other country so if you have a US passport or a European passport or any other rather than a passport you can easily travel and cross the countries by land and travel by land if you don't want to move within the continents but for a person like me it's very hard like I have to get a visa for every country to be able to show that I can pass countries by land but I got to do it for one year in South America from Bolivia to Peru, Peru to Chile, Chile to Argentina, Argentina to Uruguay, Uruguay to Brazil. It took me one year to travel within all these countries by land, by bus, long night buses like in Brazil I took like so many 24-hour buses and yeah just because I understood that I can do it and when I understood how large is the carbon impact when we fly I just realized I want to do it and if I could do it for a year with my situation you can definitely do it. The more I travel the more I realize there is more to see so that's why I've been taking my time and by whooping and really living with the locals and learning and spending some time in different countries, different cities with different cultures and different people I just realized I am not in a rush to see the world and there is a lot to learn so that's why I've been enjoying it so much and can't recommend it enough. I hope all this information was useful and I really hope to see more people whooping around the world. Thank you so much for listening to me and for watching this video. I send you all love, health and happiness.