For those of you unfamiliar with CouchSurfing, the most basic explanation is that it's a website used by travelers to search for hosts in cities all over the world who let strangers sleep at their house for free. Potentially dangerous? Yes. But really cool? Also yes. Some people are obviously more into it than others, hosting anyone and everyone who comes through their town; while others (like us) are more selective and are more likely to host and surf with people they actually have things in common with. Still others put their status at "coffee or a drink" meaning they can show you around the area or meet up for a beer or an activity but for some reason or another can't actually have someone stay at their house.
Couchsurfing's motto is "participating in creating a better world, one couch at a time." While I don't entirely believe crashing on someone's couch or floor or spare room is creating a better world, I definitely do like the cultural exchange part better than the free crash pad part. A couple of their statistics (I'm using the term loosely here) are:
Friendships created: 2,778,415
Successful surf or host experiences: 2,701,762
Countries represented: 245
Cities represented: 80,001
Of course the website and its creators push the fact that you'll make life-long friends all over the world and share ethnic meals and learn traditional dances or whatever else, but it's also likely that only about a quarter of these numbers are active users. From our experiences less and less people care about that kind of thing, for better or for worse. On the one hand, we just stayed with a woman who gets bombarded with requests, but emails everyone back with her cell phone number and lets pretty much anyone stay, even though she works during the day and has 2 or 3 of her kids living at home. But on the other hand, and we especially noticed this while hosting in Whitehorse, is that often people who are coming through will mass email every host in town (most of the time without ever reading a profile) and once they've found a place to stay they neglect to mention this to the other people they've emailed. This also makes them less acountable and a couple of times we sat around on our days off waiting on a surfer who never even showed up. We had a couple of friends in Whitehorse who were hosting in their rented place, owned by a roomate who was also a host. He'd let anyone stay without bothering to even be at home most of the time and they were often stuck entertaining his guests. When we're hosting or surfing we try and find people who seem cool and who we would mesh well with, but I do have to admit that sometimes when you're traveling, a place to shower and cook a real meal and sleep in a real bed can be tempting enough to make us stay with someone who might not be a life-long friend.
I hadn't hosted or surfed much before moving to the Yukon, but we both decided we wanted to host while we were up there, and the people we stayed with on the way up were pretty amazing and reinforced the thought even more. Plus we figured that hosting a fair bit in Canada would make it easier to find hosts in New Zealand since we'd know what we liked and didn't like about the people who stayed with us. Overall up there our experiences were pretty good! We've stayed friends with a few people who came through our place over the summer and got along well with pretty much everyone else. Our worst experiences (but they still weren't terrible) were just with people who were fairly quiet (a.k.a super boring) and who we didn't have a heck of a lot in common with.
The biggest difference I've noticed between the surfing in Whitehorse and what we've done here so far is that our hosts are super keen to get out and DO something. We had countless guests up north who would sleep in all morning, check their email for hours (what is up with everyone traveling with laptops?!), then wander into town to look around the museum. Thankfully we were off to a good start when one of our first hosts near Auckland took us to explore some caves and a pretty sweet beach and very patiently answered Dan's million questions. Since we don't have a car this kind of thing is even more appreciated. Plus they were just super nice, laid back people. A few travelers who have picked us up hitchhiking have mentioned (or we've guessed) that they don't really know what Kiwis are like. I guess we're really lucky in that regard; we get to chat with people who have lived here their whole lives; people who moved here from Europe or North America or wherever; people who live on farms or in the cities and people with all sorts of jobs who can answer all sorts of questions and recommend all sorts of things to do and see. We've gone to beaches and made dinners and worked in gardens and slept in the tiny loft of an anarchist radical social centre and checked out waterfalls. That's the biggest bonus of hitching rather than renting a backpacker van and sleeping on the side of the road somewhere. So far we've stayed with a couple renovating their home who let us stay anyway, a couple of fellow Canadians, a family on a fifth generation, 2000 acre farm (where I somewhat successfully lead her horse onto a trailer), a couple of super accommodating families, some young Christian guys and the caretakers of the social centre. Not to mention the impromptu, unofficial couchsurfing we did before our volcano hike with the couple who picked us up hitchhiking not too far from town, dropped us off at their place, gave us the keys, showed us the computer and the shower, and left for the night. And the couple we are currently staying with (another hitchhiking saviour) who took us to their small farm, fed us, played some table tennis, gave us some small jobs and told us we can stay as long as we want. Not bad for only being 1/4 of the way through our trip.
We (well, I) did unfortunately have one pretty bad experience with an older host in Nelson. This woman was in her late 50s and often older hosts are better since they've got a well stocked kitchen and usually you get your own room. Dan got along with her fairly well, but she must have taken an immediate disliking to me. Constantly berating everything I was doing (even though we bought and made dinner which she initally refused to eat because the presentation was lacking, cleaned up, and spent all morning weeding her garden) until the point where I preferred stayed in the spare room packing rather than be around her (and she even freaked out about that). Luckily that's over and I won't have to deal with her again. One of the touchy parts of couchsurfing is leaving a reference. If someone was great, I try and leave them a really positive one right away, especially if they are traveling, so I can recommend them to other potential hosts. If someone was so-so I probably won't even bother. But with this woman, even though she was an awful host and kind of a crazy person in general, it's probably better to just forget about it than risk having an ongoing back and forth argument publicly via the Internet. I suppose we were bound to have a negative experience at some point, and I'm sure this one will be pretty funny to look back on. Especially the part where she accused me of stealing 3 rolls of toilet paper. Now we know to ask things like how households conserve water (not usually an issue in Canada) or electricity or to try and see if they like having a long chat after dinner or if they prefer some down time. In the long run this experience will probably make us better and more considerate guests.
Also, an interesting fact we learned from the guy we are currently staying with: if sheep are left too long before they're sheared (I'm guessing this is especially bad around this time of year in this area because of all the moisture), maggots thrive in their anuses and the sheep can die horrible drawn out deaths by being essentially eaten alive from the inside. Suck on THAT you crazy Gentle World vegans!
-Amy
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