The 100 Best Volunteer Vacations to Enrich Your Life Part 7

The Nicaragua trip gave Stein the confidence to go it alone for her 2008 trip to Peru's Sacred Valley to teach English. "My parents suggested I take a friend, but I wanted to be able to immerse myself in my own situation, to be responsible entirely for myself," she said. Through Projects Abroad, a U.K.-based company that organizes volunteer trips to 24 countries, Grace served as head English teacher in Pisac, near Cuzco.

"I had hoped to teach young kids, but I ended up teaching kids of all ages-some that were my age or older," Stein said. And she was surprised to see how appreciative they were. "They're grateful for everything. Even something small," she remarked. "I'd give stickers to boys who were 17 or 18 and they'd be over the moon. We'd be singing the theme song to t.i.tanic and everybody would stand up and sing and dance. Kids here would never do that."

The trips have reshaped Stein's worldview. "Volunteering in other countries puts everything in perspective," she mused. "We're privileged in Boulder. Everyone has clothes and food and cell phones and computers. We hear about starving kids. But to actually see it is huge."

PROJECTS ABROAD.

produce the news.

COCHABAMBA, BOLIVIA.

Journalism can never be silent: that is its greatest virtue and its greatest fault. It must speak, and speak immediately, while the echoes of wonder, the claims of triumph and the signs of horror are still in the air.

-Henry Anatole Grunwald, former editor of Time 25 Thomas Jefferson said that given the choice of a government without newspapers or newspapers without government, he'd pick the latter.

The Cocha Banner, an English newspaper in Cochabamba, Bolivia, keeps the government honest and gives linguistics students at the Universidad Mayor de San Simon the chance to practice their English skills. Yet it also gives international interns who are working journalists or contemplating journalism as a career or study option the chance to gain some fantastic work experience abroad and add to their portfolios while living in one of the most vibrant countries in Latin America.

The monthly newspaper was started by Projects Abroad, a volunteer organization with projects in 23 countries, and it offers a mix of reviews, stories, poetry, and letters. Volunteers who come to work on this project will write, take photos, and work side by side with Cochabambinos who need someone proficient in English to answer the language-learner's perpetual question, "How do you say...?"

Projects Abroad offers two-week-or monthlong print journalism internships. Print interns will be involved in every aspect of producing a paper, from reporting stories and interviewing people to writing and editing articles to designing and laying out a publication. You'll work with local reporters and, if you're up for it, freelance for Los Tiempos, the biggest Spanish-speaking newspaper in Cochabamba.

Volunteer Minato Kobori described his internship as follows: "I knew very little about Bolivia and even less about journalism when I arrived.... I wanted to have a totally new experience. I let the culture of Bolivia sink in everyday and at the same time learned different things as a journalist. Every single day my eyes were opened."

THE RODNEY DANGERFIELD OF SOUTH AMERICA.

As South American countries go, Bolivia tends to be overlooked by North American tourists. Here are just three reasons why that's a major mistake: Salar de Uyuni in southwest Bolivia is the world's largest salt plain, an eerie white, desertlike landscape punctuated by pockets of brilliant color.

The Cal Orck'o dinosaur quarry (again, the world's largest) outside Sucre has 332 different kinds of dinosaur footprints.

The 108-foot-tall Cristo de la Concordia (Christ of Peace) overlooking Cochabamba is said to be slightly taller than the more famous Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer) overlooking Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

Anyone who is fluent in Spanish can instead choose a broadcast internship that lets him or her work on-air at a local Cochabamba radio station. Radio Del Valle is based just ten minutes from the Projects Abroad office, and the station's owner, Dr. Antonio Revollo, welcomes two volunteers at a time. You must be confident enough to read articles on-air and compile your own stories. You'll also a.s.sist in the production booth, partic.i.p.ate in live discussion programs, conduct interviews with local people, and research stories by traveling around the city and possibly to nearby villages to track leads for stories, which you then write and broadcast live.

Cochabamba, a pulsating urban hub 8,000 feet above sea level, has one of the world's best climates-sunny days and cool crisp evenings. There's lots of nightlife, gorgeous plazas, the largest outdoor market in South America (La Cancha), and a university that attracts students from all around the world. Plus you're never more than a short plane ride from Bolivia's infinitely varying landscapes.

Projects Abroad also offers teaching and health-care opportunities at its Bolivian headquarters. In your free time, you can trek in the Andes, relax at Lake t.i.ticaca, visit volcanoes, or explore the jungles of Chapare, rich with wildlife. Volunteers get three hours of Spanish lessons per week with students from the university.

You'll live and eat with a host family. A two-week trip, including three daily meals and a bed, runs $2,395; it's $2,995 to stay for a month.

HOW TO GET IN TOUCH.

Projects Abroad, 347 West 36th Street, Suite 903, New York NY 10018, 888-839-3535, www.projects-abroad.org.

CONSERVACION PATAGONICA.

help create patagonia national park.

AYSEN, PATAGONIA, CHILE.

Each of us, at some point in our lives, will come to realize that most of the ordinary things we take for granted are, in fact, almost never permanent and, in fact, often fragile.

-Kris Tompkins, head of Conservacion Patagonica 26 Patagonia, a wilderness area covering the southern tips of both Argentina and Chile, exists in a mostly unspoiled state, at least for the time being. Less than 5 percent of this vast landscape of fjords, glaciers, and ancient forests is protected, however, which means that at any time a corporation could snap up the rest of it and poof! there goes the neighborhood.

Kristine McDivitt Tompkins, who retired at 43 as CEO (and one of the founders) of the Patagonia clothing company, decided in 1993 that it was about time to guarantee that future generations would be able to witness this wild and untrammeled land. Her husband Douglas Tompkins, former CEO and co-founder of the North Face and co-founder of Esprit, had founded Conservation Land Trust, through which they created Pumalin Park in southern Chile. In 2000, Kris Tompkins founded Conservacion Patagonica (CP), a land trust that's working to buy and preserve as much of the area as it can. Between them, they can claim more than 2 million acres of land placed into conservation in Chile and Argentina.

In 2004, the Tompkinses found the buy of the century-a 173,000-acre sheep ranch in Chile that borders three already protected national reserves. Estancia Valley Chacabuco, the 85-year-old ranch that CP purchased on a wing and a prayer, will join the neighboring reserves to be protected forever as Patagonia National Park. Like many other large landholdings in Patagonia, Estancia Valley Chacabuco once was used to raise sheep and cattle, a business that takes a heavy toll on land and wildlife. Between erosion, logging, roadbuilding, and the introduction of exotic plant species, the ranch needs a good eight to ten years of work to complete its Cinderella-like transformation.

Volunteers work in groups of six alongside gauchos and Chilean scientists doc.u.menting native plants, collecting seeds, digging out fence posts, and removing non-native plants that, in some cases, have taken over entire hillsides. There are also cattle and sheep to remove, visitors centers to build, and power to derive from renewable sources. Work groups camp in a work area for about four days, then have two rest days. Work usually begins at 9 a.m., with a break for lunch around 12:30 p.m. After lunch, work begins again between 2 and 3 p.m. and continues until 5 or 6 p.m.

When it's finished, the park, with its magnificent steppes, beech forests, and mountain peaks, will represent the full range of Patagonia's natural diversity: gra.s.slands, Andean foothills, the Andes themselves, and arid and semiarid Patagonian steppes. It is home to more than a hundred fauna species including the four-eyed Patagonian frog, nearly extinct huemul deer, and guanacos-camelids that are similar to llamas.

Digging posts can be backbreaking work, but on days off, volunteers can indulge in everything from fly-fishing to wine imbibing to long-distance cycling and hiking. A minimum stay of three weeks is recommended. An extensive gear list on the CP website will help you prepare for your trip.

For $40 a day (you can stay up to three months), you'll get housing and meals. Most volunteers come between October and May, Chile's spring and summer months.

HOW TO GET IN TOUCH.

Conservacion Patagonica, Building 1062, Fort Cronkhite, Sausalito, CA 94965, 415-229-9339, www.conservacionpatagonica.org. The volunteer coordinator can be reached at 56 65 970833.

SISTER, SISTER, ARGENTINIAN SISTER.

Before Estancia Valley Chacabuco came on the market, Conservacion Patagonica (CP) was busy across the border. In 2001, the land trust purchased the 155,000-acre Estancia Monte Leon, an Argentine sheep ranch located on the southern Atlantic sh.o.r.eline a few hundred miles north of the Strait of Magellan. CP crafted a master plan for the ranch's transition to a national park and, in 2002, donated the property to the Argentine National Parks Administration, creating the country's first coastal national park. Monte Leon is known for its remarkable richness and diversity of species, including Magellanic penguins, sea lions, elephant seals, leopard seals, and migratory seabirds.

FUNDACION ALDEAS DE PAZ (PEACE VILLAGE FOUNDATION).

protect the resources of the indigenous pemon nation.

LA GRAN SABANA, VENEZUELA.

The Indian way of life gave me some understanding of original contentedness and happiness.

-Frederick Heine, volunteer with Peace Villages 27 Thanks to abundant oil reserves discovered early in the 20th century, Venezuela is a wealthy nation. It has excellent roads, modern architecture, and a well-developed tourism infrastructure. But not everybody has reaped the benefits of the oil boom, most notably the indigenous people who live in the Gran Sabana region.

The Pemon Indians, an ethnic minority who are fiercely protective of their cultural ident.i.ty and traditional way of life, face all sorts of 21st-century problems. Their tropical forests once covered more than a third of the Gran Sabana, but after three centuries of logging, mining, and cattle farming, their forest has been reduced to small areas of trees amid giant swaths of gra.s.slands that show little propensity for regeneration.

Venezuelans who live near the Gran Sabana often refer to it as Second Africa. This moniker is certainly an appropriate nickname: The region's expansive gra.s.slands are interrupted mainly by islands of tangled jungle and enormous mesas that rise dramatically over the savanna. The Pemon call them tepuis, which means "house of the spirits."

Fundacion Aldeas de Paz (Peace Village Foundation), a nonprofit located in Santa Elena de Uairen, the capital of Gran Sabana, sends volunteers to a Pemon village where they can learn about the culture, pitch in with such ch.o.r.es as gathering yucca, and offer ideas for developing sustainable tourism, such as ecotourism and organic agriculture.

Manfred Monninghoff, the easygoing German who started the Peace Village Foundation, spent several years volunteering in Europe, Asia, and other countries in South America before settling in Santa Elena. His nonprofit now attracts volunteers from across the world who work with children, build green buildings, provide horse therapy, and even have their own community radio show.

EPIC PROPORTIONS.

It was the Gran Sabana's lush jungles, snowcapped mountains, and stunning panoramas that inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's cla.s.sic book, The Lost World. Here's the short list of other Venezuelan superlatives: Angel Falls, the world's highest waterfall, stands at 3,212 feet. The Pemon call it Parecupa-meru, which means "waterfall of the very deep water."

At two billion years old, the Guayana shield in the Gran Sabana is the world's oldest surface, having been formed when South America and Africa were still part of the continent Gondwana.

Venezuela's Lake Maracaibo is South America's largest lake.

Venezuela has the longest coastline on the Caribbean-more than 1,750 miles long.

Until August 2008, the Andean city of Merida could boast that it had the highest (15,633 feet) and longest (7.77 miles) tramway in the world. The tramway was closed indefinitely after a study indicated that the system had reached the end of its life (the tramway was revived in the 1990s after a previous closure).

If you choose to work with the Pemon, you'll be located in Chirikayen, a village named after the tepui that serves as its backdrop. Located in a picturesque valley within Gran Sabana National Park, it's a b.u.mpy hour-and-a-half drive from Santa Elena. Projects are flexible and range from indigenous gardening, planting trees, and researching and protecting wildlife to working with children in the school and teaching English. You might also sh.o.r.e up the community's infrastructure by performing maintenance work, or even initiate an environmental education program. Whatever you choose, just know you'll get a rare front row seat onto contemporary indigenous issues.

Fritz Reuter, a Peace Villages volunteer from Austria, described his volunteer experience as follows: "As you quickly realize, the Pemon of Chirikayen do everything with a smile on their faces, they also have an enviable philosophy of 'compartir.' Every man and woman is an integral cog in the wheel and everything is done together as a community-working, eating, worshipping and socializing."

Amenities are very basic in Chirikayen, so be prepared for a simple, rugged way of life. There is electricity in the village for roughly three hours a day when a generator is run. Clothes are washed in the river, so you'll need to bring eco-friendly toiletries and laundry detergent.

You'll stay in family-style accommodations with locals (possibly the village chief), sleep in a hammock, and share three traditionally cooked meals a day. Dishes you might be served include pabellon, stewed and shredded meat with rice, black beans, and banana; cachapa, a sweet corn pancake served with cheese; and arepas, cornmeal bread topped with cheese, ham, or chicken.

Donation (it's all tax-deductible) is $835 for a week, $990 for two weeks, and $1,140 for three weeks.

HOW TO GET IN TOUCH.

Fundacion Aldeas de Paz, Centro Comunitario, Lomas de Piedra Canaima via Sampai, Santa Elena de Uairen, Codigo Postal 8032, La Gran Sabana, Estado Bolivar, Venezuela, 58 289 414 5721, www.peacevillages.org.

CORNERSTONE FOUNDATION.

create an hiv/aids awareness campaign.

SAN IGNACIO, BELIZE.

I have learned more about love, selflessness and human understanding in this great adventure in the world of AIDS than I ever did in the cut-throat, compet.i.tive world in which I spent my life.

-Anthony Perkins, American actor.

28 Everyone from members of the G-8 to U2 frontman Bono is working on the African AIDS crisis. But what about addressing the issue closer to home? The country of Belize, where every third person lives in poverty, has the highest rate of HIV/AIDS infection in Central America, and the second highest rate in the Caribbean.

The Cornerstone Foundation, a gra.s.sroots nonprofit started in 1989, uses volunteers to get the word out about HIV/AIDS. Volunteers who choose the HIV/AIDS outreach program, one of several volunteer opportunities offered by Cornerstone, spend two weeks creating a community awareness project. They work with a team resource leader, but the program is purposely loose and unstructured, giving creative types lots of leeway to use their imagination. Past volunteers have done everything from painting a mural on the wall of the local football stadium to creating puppet shows, from posting flyers in bar bathrooms to hosting school poster compet.i.tions or organizing AIDS Orphan March activities. It's a golden opportunity for anybody looking to develop skills in project management and community development.

According to Cornerstone, "Belize is a small country with a total population of around 300,000. Because of the high unemployment rates, Belize has an extremely mobile population; people living in one district and working in another.... This movement makes it difficult to address prevention through behavior change communication, which requires several meetings with an individual."

That means that reinforcing messages of prevention is even more important. The school system in Belize focuses on abstinence-only s.e.x education, which has been proven ineffective. The Youth Amba.s.sador Program allows young volunteers to address prevention in a peer-to-peer way, in hopes that the students they talk to will, in turn, take the prevention message to the wider community.

Nestled between Mexico and Guatemala, Belize offers an intriguing mix of tropical forest, majestic mountains, and mysterious Maya temples. San Ignacio (locally known as Cayo), where you'll be located, is a pretty little town right across the Guatemalan border. Archaeologists, Peace Corps types, and adventure travelers mix with the town's diverse populations of Creole, Maya, and Mestizo.

Spanish lessons are included in the program, as well as canoe trips down the Macal River and rain forest hikes to the ancient Maya sites of Xunantuich and Cahal Pech. Cornerstone will extend your monthlong tourist visa if you're game to work with bush doctors and natural healers, who will introduce you to ancient rain forest medicines. Volunteers can also address women's, children's, and disability issues in Belize.

The two-week HIV/AIDS community awareness program costs $599 and includes shared accommodations, hot daily lunches, transportation to and from the airport, and organized tours.

HOW TO GET IN TOUCH.

Cornerstone Foundation, 90 Burns Avenue, P.O. Box 242, San Ignacio, Cayo District, Belize, www.cornerstonefoundationbelize.org.; U.S. contact: 501-678-9909.

SPELUNKING, BELIZE-STYLE.

Even a jaded adventurer like Indiana Jones would probably be impressed with Belize's Actun Tunichil Muknal. Also called the Cave of the Stone Sepulcher, it has the stalagmites, stalact.i.tes, limestone flows, intriguing rock formations, and bats that are typical of most caves. But if you're daring and fit enough (there's a stream near the entrance you have to swim through) to venture farther in, you'll also find not just shards of ancient pottery, but hundreds of complete pre-Columbian vessels embedded into the cave's walls. Not to mention several skeletons, presumably remains from human sacrifices.

Although no one knows for sure, archaeologists have suggested that the ceramic pots were carried underground to collect zuhuy ha (virgin water) for Mayan ceremonies. Getting to this ancient wormhole to the netherland, located about 10 miles south of the village of Teakettle, involves three stream crossings and a strenuous hike through the Tapir Mountain Nature Reserve.

p.r.o.nATURALEZA AND TARICAYA RESEARCH CENTER.

save the rain forest.