Joe's World Backpacking Trip Stories and pics from my travels.

I spent three weeks volunteering on a farm on the outskirts of Cordoba in Northern Argentina.  I used the WWOOF organization to find the farm.  WWOOF is a volunteer organization that helps volunteers who want to work on organic farms find work in different countries.  The farms post their profiles on a page, and you look for the one that sounds good to you.  The idea of WWOOF is that the volunteer works between 3-6 hours a day, five days a week for free food and bed.  There should be some kind of cultural exchange where the volunteer can learn about the practices on the farm or certain skills.  My experience didn't work out like that.  On the positive side, the farm was 30 miles from the nearest small town, with a running river you can drink water from nearby.  They had horses, cattle, goats, chickens and rabbits.  The place was also a hotel for people who wanted to stay on a farm in the middle of nowhere.  My Spanish is much better from being there for three weeks and I can ride horses a bit now.  On the negative side, the woman who owns the farm pretty much uses the WWOOF organization to find free labor.  There was no cultural exchange, and if I let her, I would have worked 8-10 hours a day, seven days a week.  So, my first WWOOF experience was more negative than positive, but I'm searching for more farms in the south of Argentina around Patagonia since I'll need to work a bit anyway to keep traveling.  This farm was a legit Gaucho farm though, we had asados every few days and we killed two calfs while I was there.  The same day we killed it the meat was on the grill for dinner.  So that was pretty cool.