The 100 Best Affordable Vacations (78 page)

 
Todos Santos, Baja California Sur, Mexico.
The desert setting, the colonial architecture, and the nearby Pacific have enticed both artists and visitors to this town, an hour north of Cabo San Lucas.
www.todossantos.cc.

 
Towles Court, Sarasota, Florida.
This once blighted area has been reborn in the past decade thanks to a city plan to attract artists. Try to catch the monthly Gallery Walk on the third Friday.
www.towlescourt.com.

To tool around in style, rent a bike at the
Thunderbird Hotel
(601 W. San Antonio St., 432-729-1984,
www.thunderbirdmarfa.com
). The town sits on a plateau, so everything’s flat, but doing the gallery trek on foot can be brutal in the desert sun, where temperatures sometimes hit the 100s. Still, the town’s busier in the summer than in winter.

As expected, good food has followed good art—but with a funky Texas twist. Grab a Marfalafel and humus from
Food Shark
(432-386-6540), a catering truck usually parked under the pavilion between the railroad tracks and the Marfa Book Co.
Pizza Foundation
(100 E. San Antonio St., 432-729-3377) offers Brooklyn style pies, served from an old gas station. And if you want to dine somewhere truly unique, be sure to stop by
Pardes
(209 W. El Paso St., 432-729-4425), a bar that serves gumbo and bratwursts in a former funeral home.

HOW TO GET IN TOUCH

Marfa Chamber of Commerce,
207 N. Highland Ave., P.O. Box 635, Marfa, TX 79843, 800-650-9696 or 432-729-4942,
www.marfacc.com
.

teach english to newcomers

AUSTIN, MINNESOTA

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

—
POET EMMA LAZARUS, “THE NEW COLOSSUS” (1883)

97 |
Imagine the life of an immigrant child living in a strange land where he doesn’t know the language or local customs. Whatever your feeling about immigration, there’s no denying that it’s particularly hard on children.

“They didn’t come here because they chose to, they’re here because their parents chose to,” says Bud Philbrook, co-founder of Global Volunteers, an organization founded in 1984 that helps altruistic travelers find opportunities to help other people. Although the St. Paul, Minnesota–based group works around the world, it decided it couldn’t turn its back on the needs of children in its own backyard, which led it to develop a volunteer program in Austin, Minnesota. The program adheres to the same tenets of other Global Volunteers projects from West Virginia to Ghana. The idea is not to give people a hand out, but to help them help themselves.

For years now, a dedicated cadre of volunteers has spent a summer week in Austin, about two hours south of Minneapolis, working with some of its youngest and newest residents. The children are mainly from Mexico, although there are some from Vietnam, Laos, Bosnia, and Somalia. In all, about 30 languages are spoken in Austin, a small town best known for being the home of Hormel Foods.

The volunteers stay in dormitory-type rooms at a community college and eat basic cafeteria food. Their job is to help run an education program to teach children English. “During the summer months, they go home and play with kids of the same culture and their language skills regress,” Philbrook explains. “This is to give those kids an opportunity to jump-start themselves for the academic year.”

Participants pay $995 for the weeklong experience (transportation not included). Each additional family member participating, up to four, receives a $100 discount, while students and repeaters get a $50 price break. The organization strives to attract a diverse group of volunteers. Philbrook says he’s learned that groups function best when there are members representing all ages, from teens to seniors. Each brings a different perspective, and makes for a stronger team.

$PLURGE

LA DOLCE VITA
VOLUNTEERING

Although all Global Volunteers programs require hard work, some benefit from geography. Consider the teaching-English program in the Puglia region of Italy (on the heel of the boot). This is one of the country’s poorest areas, and many families can’t afford after-school English classes for their children, which are quite common in Italy. Volunteers come for two weeks and work on conversational skills with kids. In between, they get to enjoy Italy. “We stay in very nice hotels,” Global Volunteers co-founder Philbrook says. “We eat wonderful Italian food, and we drink wonderful Italian red wine. I don’t know how else to say it.” The cost? $3,195, not including transportation.

For volunteers, days start with planning and teambuilding sessions. Along with the practical discussions of the day’s assignments and a review of the previous day’s activities, each group member takes a turn to share a message of the day, be it poetry, a song, or a quote. Albert Schweitzer’s message, “Only those who serve will be truly happy,” is shared often, but so are the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mahatma Gandhi.

Then the volunteers head to work. Sometimes, they’ll read to a group of first graders, or team-teach a conversational English class to ten-year-olds. In the afternoon, the kids may play games. But even if it’s kickball, it’s still an English lesson: They can’t say
segundo,
it must be “second” base. There are also tours of the college campus and field trips. Toward the end of the week, the children stage a variety show. It’s hard to tell who is more proud, the parents or the volunteers.

Participants usually take a field trip during the week and have dinner with an immigrant family.

Linda Parkinson of Kansas City says she has used two Global Volunteers programs for family vacations. It was hard work, but it provided incredible insights into the lives of immigrant children, she says. And the week in Austin did offer the positive benefits of a vacation. “Because it’s so different and you’re being forced to live differently, it’s rejuvenating,” she says. “It’s gotten you out of your patterns.”

Global Volunteers also offers two other experiences in North America:

 
Blackfeet Indian Reservation, Montana.
As in Austin, some volunteers work with children, but others visit the elderly, or work on construction and renovation projects alongside troubled teens and young adults. Accommodations are on a community college campus, although the group has a cook to prepare meals.

 
Southern Appalachian Labor School, West Virginia.
The program teaches skills to high school dropouts. Even if volunteers can’t hammer a nail straight, they can still make a difference. “For the kids, the most valuable thing is that some doctor or professor or cop or truck driver will come all the way from California or Texas to the hollows of West Virginia to speak with them,” Philbrook says.

HOW TO GET IN TOUCH

Global Volunteers,
375 E. Little Canada Rd., St. Paul, MN 55117, 800-487-1074,
www.globalvolunteers.org
.

go with the girls

NATIONWIDE

It is the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter.

—
ACTRESS MARLENE DIETRICH
(1901–1992)

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For women, traveling with other women is about more than place, food, activity—even shopping. “Women talk about personal things. They get to know each other on a much deeper level, using the trip as the prop,” says Phyllis Stoller.

Stoller should know. She founded the Women’s Travel Club in 1992, before the current girlfriend getaways craze really took off. She has since sold the club, but during the decade or so she ran it, Stoller arranged dozens of women’s trips in the United States and abroad. And although her trips often included women who didn’t know each other in advance, she says the appeal is the same whether you’re lifelong friends or new acquaintances.

“Women like to take internal experiences and talk about them, and men typically don’t. Women want to share immediate reactions to things,” she says.

Other bonuses of traveling with women: If you don’t look good or feel good, you don’t have to cover it up. With other women, it’s less embarrassing to call for a bathroom stop or find you’ve spilled food on your shirt.

Most important, though, is the opportunity to share. “It’s a great catharsis. We’re all somewhat isolated today,” she says.

WOMEN-ONLY TRAVEL

The following organizations offer small-group trips on specific dates for women only: