When did we decide that travelling was all about letting your worries go and just paying for an all-inclusive hotel, where you will do nothing that really helps but sit around the pool all day and just eat and drink whatever? Then you just go back to your life, having spent your money and gaining nothing but a tan.

There is no more time to waste, people!

Vacations are meant to make your energy go somewhere else, not go to waste.Let’s face it, our travelling IMPACTS our Earth, our lives and it should impact others’ lives too. Why not waste our money and time on valuable trips that will not only help others but really make our vacations mean something, make us better people and leave a mark on our journey through life.

Voluntourism

The new way of conscious travelling that makes you a part of the community of the places you want to visit and teaches you how helping around while you travel helps yourself even more than you would think. From travelling around India while helping medicine and food get to those remote places around the country, to helping small entrepreneurs in Africa get the exposure they need by having photography lessons that you will then apply to create material for their projects. You name it.

You decide where you want to go, and you decide too, how your travel will impact the places you are getting to. The impact on yourself will come by itself.

At Bushman Photography, we make sure our private tours take people’s energy where it belongs. Our journeys are prepared to make you encounter and interact with the Maya community at Riviera Maya, Mexico. Our staff has done projects in the community we frequently take our clients to like building their orchards, constructing playgrounds, donating teaching supplies for the local school and also encourage visitors to buy the communities’ handmade arts and crafts.

Now, we have the opportunity to bring new ideas into action and we are hoping like-minded travellers will give us their thoughts on what projects would work:

• Helping our Maya community harvest while you learn about Ancient Maya Medicinal plants.
• Learn to craft a wooden figure or make a beautiful necklace that our community will then be able to sell.
• Learn about honey extraction while you help the Maya prepare the honey for selling.
• Since through our private tours you can learn photography, you could then use your social media to expose our community’s projects and make more people participate.
• Teach our kids. We have different subjects from which you can choose and help us make our kids grow with better skills and opportunities.
• On the long run: We are planning a long-term program where our visitors can stay for a longer period of time and participate more actively with the community, while, of course, getting to know the Riviera Maya: help build a better harvesting system / become an English teacher for the community / …

Frankly, voluntourism should be the only way of vacations that exist.

We can’t waste any more time just vacationing to forget about the world. This world is our home, and only we can make it a better place for us with every step we take. Everything is connected, we need other people to live: our food is grown by someone else, our car was made by someone else, our house, our phone…

We need others in our lives. Others need us in their lives. Don’t take that for granted, we need to be conscious of how we impact ourselves, Earth, and others.

Choose to travel with a purpose.