A Great Way To Travel and Make New Friends

[AaronColby]

If you like to travel, meet new people, make new friends and not waste money on hotels (we all know that money is for your new wing right?) then I have a great website you should check out:

http://www.couchsurfing.com

To put it simply, it is a social networking site for travelers that allows them to connect with locals all over the world and find a place to stay and invite travelers into your own home locally. However, there is a lot more to it then that, the CouchSurfing community is very strong and is a great way to meet people in your home town and find out about great events. I've been on the site for about 8 months now and it really is amazing. Every time I head out for the weekend I message a couple of locals at my destination that look like we would get along. Within a few days I hear back from them and I have a place to stay with someone that can give me the low down on all the great non-touristy areas of their city. I can't stress this enough though, that this is a very safe site, and the people you will meet on here are some of the nicest and most generous people you could ever hope to meet in your life. I won't get into the details but there are a number of checks and balances to make sure people are on the up and up.

One of the strong points is that you can connect with people who have similar hobbies; rock climbing, dancing, paragliding, music, etc... So while you are in a foreign location you get the inside scoop on whatever common interests you have. Another aspect is that you can invite your hosts out to experience something new with you which can be a very rewarding experience. I always try to bring my host out rock climbing and when I get my Tandem rating I can't wait to take people out flying.

I hope you guys find this interesting and useful. If you have any more questions let me know and I will try to answer them. My secret motive right now is that I am one of the few paragliders on this site in SoCal so I'm trying to recruit more (there are tons in Europe though)... are we that anti-social? You can see my profile here:

http://www.couchsurfing.com/people/garbagio

Cheers,
Aaron