Finding myself exam-free but with zero plans and very little money at the beginning of last summer, I was faced with a conundrum: how could I travel and make the most of my summer with no funds to do so? Searching online I stumbled upon ‘Workaway’ – a website which offered volunteering, working abroad and cultural exchange, all arranged by simply signing up to the website (with a small fee) and then directly messaging hostel owners, families, farm owners and all kinds of people who required mostly volunteer help in their enterprises.
By far the best thing about Workaway is the ease at which you can communicate and arrange a placement with ‘hosts’ across the world, and most of the time without a working visa, as you are acting as a volunteer rather than an employee. Deciding I wanted to work in a hostel, preferably near a beach, I began messaging hostel owners advertising for help in Spain, Portugal and Greece. After a couple of weeks, I began to receive a steady flow of replies in my inbox.
“Workaway is championed for its ease of use”
Now, this is where I issue a slight word of caution – though Workaway is championed for its ease of use, equally, it is easy for employers to recruit under false pretences. Having read some horror stories, I did my research carefully, reading reviews of the hostels who were offering me work by previous Workawayers and customer reviews on websites like TripAdvisor.
After receiving a couple of weird sounding messages from Spanish men who wanted me to clean their apartments in exchange for staying with them, I opted for Nice Way Cascais – a hostel and surf camp in Cascais, a coastal beach town just West of Lisbon (Portugal) which had glowing reviews. After exchanging just a few messages with Monica, one of the hostel managers, I handed in my notice at my part-time job at Cineworld and booked my flights to sunny Portugal, with just a few weeks left until I would be starting my volunteer job.
“I felt slightly out of my depth”
My first night in Cascais was interesting to say the least. Arriving at the hostel at 1 am on my own I felt slightly out of my depth; but I was greeted by a fellow volunteer, Patrick. He showed me to our tiny room (or ‘the slave quarters’ as we later affectionately referred to it) and introduced me to another volunteer, Isabelle. Having settled into my new spot on the top of one of the two bunk beds, I had the shock of my life as I was awoken at 4 am by who I later learned to be two of the surf instructors drunkenly staggering into the room. Carrying a sofa they had found in the street which they proceeded to dump on the top bunk of Isabelle’s bed, they clocked me and began repeatedly asking who I was and where I was from.
[I was] “given a lot more responsibility than I had expected”
As the morning sun streamed through the window of my new home, I could appreciate the funny side of what had happened the night before. I met Tiago, my boss, who explained my duties and trained me on the cutest outside bar I have ever seen. My shifts would consist of working the after-surf and evening bar shifts, helping to serve the themed dinners which occurred three times a week and doing the odd evening shift on the hostel’s reception. Being given a lot more responsibility than I had expected, I gained valuable transferable skills and experiences; learning to operate the online reception system which allowed me to check guests in and out, taking payments, running busy bar shifts on my own, answering the phone to customers globally and forming relationships with people I would never normally have gotten the chance to meet.
The perk of my trip was the chance to partake (for free) in the surf lessons ran by the Cascais Surf School. Every day the surf instructors drove the hostel guests in brightly coloured surf vans to the nearby Guincho Beach, a renowned surf spot. There, the amazing surf instructors from countries including Brazil, Germany and the Netherlands ran small group lessons, which saw beginners standing up on their boards and surfing in no time. That is not, by any means, to claim that surfing is easy. In fact, two weeks into my trip I managed to dislocate my knee whilst surfing which, unfortunately, had me out of action for the next week or so; though I continued to make the trips to Guincho to watch the lessons and soak up the sun.
As my time volunteering at Nice Way Cascais drew to a close I was sad but so grateful to have had the experience that I did. Amongst many things, I miss the Portuguese sun, the beautiful beaches, the feeling of surfing a wave, my friendships with the amazing people I met and the Thursday night barbeques followed by nights out at the Flamingo bar. For anyone looking to travel and experience a new place on a budget whilst also learning invaluable skills for the future, I could not recommend Workaway more.
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Chloe Bull
Image credits (first to third): Isabelle Abbitt, Isabelle Abbitt and Elina Rasp
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