La Vida Idealist

Going for a tour of Güiráoga

I spent a busy week traveling around Argentina with my friend Kristine, partly because I had just gotten a new job with a travel agency and they were happy that I wanted to get to know the country, partly because Kristine was visiting. It was a bit of a whirlwind tour of Argentina, traveling from Mendoza to Córdoba to Iguazú Falls in seven days, spending 65 hours on buses. Along the route I kept my eyes open for any hints of volunteering throughout the country.

Argentina is a vast country and most of the citizens reside in the larger cities. As a result, you’ll find that most of the volunteering to be found is in those areas, unless of course you wind up working at a national park. In Mendoza, the scene was a bit ritzier, and I couldn’t see many opportunities to volunteer between winery olive oil factory tours. Then again, the deeper you delve into a city, the more opportunities you will find and make for yourself.

In Córdoba, I was pleased to run smack dab into a benefit gathering for Un Techo Para Mi País (UTPMP), the organization I’ve worked with and written about in previous posts. Córdoba is a big college town, with so many universities that it seems like there are more people between the ages of 18-25 than anyone else. For that reason you’ll probably be able to find a lot of volunteer opportunities, either with UTPMP or with another group. On that day, UTPMP was sponsoring a competition to design the best model house. The artwork was impressive and a lot of information about the organization was being passed out.

Our last big stop brought us to Iguazú Falls, on the border of Brazil and Paraguay. The falls themselves remain in the Igazú National Park, and if you were looking for any volunteer opportunities there, you’d probably do better to investigate with the national park system. But just outside of the park we went to Güiráoga, a refuge and hospital for injured animals. Entirely privately funded, the refuge mostly houses birds, but other species as well. For 30 pesos you can get a tour of the facilities and see the injured animals being nursed back to health before being returned to the wild.

The refuge also takes volunteers, and at the moment has four from around the world who are helping out. We got to meet two of them as they were making the rounds and checking on the animals. You don’t have to pay to volunteer there, though you won’t get a stipend either. However, it puts you in an interesting geography as a volunteer, and you can continue to explore the different trails and areas around the falls in your off time.

So even if you’re not hanging out in Buenos Aires, there are other opportunities out there, and whether it’s for a month or an afternoon, you can do something.

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