Our Experience with Workaway
- Alex Fagan
- Aug 3, 2016
- 5 min read
"You should try workaway. We are dog sitting 10 dogs for a couple in Greece." Yep..Liam was sold.
Our introduction to Workaway sounded too good to be true but it was true. Free accommodation in a new city as well as meals
in exchange for 4-5 hours of work a day with 2 days off. Why haven't we heard of this before now?! After 3 months of travelling, eating, drinking and hiking our way through European cities we slightly (only slightly) missed having a work routine, so that evening Workaway received 2 new members. You pay a tiny yearly fee (to keep the people looking for a free ride out) upload some info about what work you are wiling to do and what skills you already have, then browse for hours on end at all the possible hosts around the world. There's help needed with language exchange, babysitting, farming, gardening, cleaning, helping run b&b's, grape picking, harvesting fruit and building off the grid houses. There's opportunities to live in areas I've never even hear of either in the family home, a guest house, a tent, a
caravan or even just under the stars. I found that most hosts have usually traveled previously and use Workaway as a kind
of "pay it forward" act after having great experiences with people they have met overseas. We knew we wanted to be somewhere regional, out of the big cities and thought it would be good to learn some new skills if we could help on a building or restoration project (no babysitting just yet) and we would be in France at the time so this narrowed down our search. We seriously lost track of time for a day or two scrolling through options and emailing to see if their dates matched up with ours. Eventually we decided and booked the next train to Hesdin!! ...yeah we had no idea
where it was either. Turns out Hesdin (Aydan) is a tiny town outside of Lille in France with beautiful century old houses and farmland. Our host was a full time Vet Surgeon and needed help keeping on top of work in her home and garden. She picked us up from Hesdin train station and made us feel so at ease, telling us about her travels and how she came to live in this quiet part of France. We felt like we were helping out at a friends house for the 6 days we were there yet we knew she appreciated every little thing we did because she just didn't have the time to do them herself. The work we did there included, collecting firewood, mowing the lawn, painting a decking, weeding and we even built a stone wall around the flowerbeds. It was all easy things but just too time consuming for our host to do after she had finished a long day of work. In return however we stayed in a big beautiful guestroom and cooked with her for each meal and we talked for hours about our travel stories and what life is like in two different sides of the world, she even introduced us to other workawayers helping out at a friends house. In 6 short days we explored and learnt about a new town, we tried new things and we made lifelong friends who we shared some great times with.
Workaway 2.0 Our positive experience with Workaway number one made us want to do it all over again but with more of a challenge. A
challenge is what we got. We contacted a couple in Spain who had converted their old farmhouses into 3 luxury self contained apartments and needed help with maintenance on their property and help with converting cojito number 4! They lived in Orgiva which is a tiny town outside of Granada at the bottom of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Spain. We had spent some time in Granada before arriving at their beautiful home and BnB but still we were NOT prepared for the heat! it was the height of summer in a rural Spanish valley. Our hosts were a British couple who had fallen in love with the area, left everything and came to Orgiva to start this new journey. They took us in like we were friends and we quickly learnt how challenging it is running a successful business with no staff as well as maintaining daily life. Our time in Orgiva was meant to be 3 weeks long and despite the heat and hard work, we loved it and stayed for a month.
Work: the work this time around was super rewarding. As well as daily routines like checking in guests, pool and bar maintenance, we were involved in building a summer house and renovating a new appartment that will eventually be rented out to guests. Liam did a damn good job of putting up a fence to keep the dogs away from the donkey (named Macarena) as well as tonnes of painting and heavy lifting. I was pretty satisfied with the bed i built and for a small cost i can completely change over your appartment in an hour to be rented out to new guests ;) We felt like we were part of the family, helping the business run and still we had so much down time and time to explore.
Accommodation: Our accommodation this time round was a whole apartment to ourselves where we got to cook in our own kitchen. That in itself is new to us since we both lived at home in Australia. Every room in the luxury bnb including ours had a panoramic view of the stunning mountains, farms and the valley in the distance. At night we sat in our garden and enjoyed a glass of Spanish wine with our hosts and we all appreciated how much hard work pays off. The sky illuminated every night with twinkling stars competing for attention. there was next to no light pollution here in Orgiva so people usually stayed up way past midnight to enjoy the starry nights (and cooler air) On our days off we explored the area by foot. walking up hills for the most amazing views and walking into town for the AMAZING free tapas that Spain is known for. I will definitely need to write a blog about Orgiva, you guys deserve to know more about this area but for now I'll stick to writing about what an amazing experience Workaway is.
If you are travelling (not on a holiday) and would like to learn some new skills, help strangers, explore new areas, make lifelong friends or just wanna volunteer in a new place because why not? then I would highly recommend Workaway. Browse for hours on the website, read reviews, contact potential hosts and even contact other workawayers for tips and opinions. When we put ourselves in other peoples shoes (and cultures) we were surprised at what we could achieve with open minds and a bit of hard work.
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