So you like to travel? Peace Corps might not be the best choice for you. Being a volunteer isn't about traveling. It's about being in one place for a long period of time. I met a volunteer who spent his entire two years on an atoll in the Pacific. A boat came by to bring mail once every three months. Besides that his opportunities for travel consisted of swimming. After the first week on the atoll, there wasn't much sight-seeing left to be done. He knew every tree on the island.

To be an effective volunteer, you have to spend most of your time at your site. Your site may be a breathtakingly beautiful mountain plateau with views of snow-covered peaks. It may be on the beach. Or it may be a slum in a large city with no plumbing. Where it is doesn't matter : you're going to get tired of it. By the second year, all the magic you felt on arrival is gone. All the excitement is over. Year two is reckoning time. What are you doing there? What are you accomplishing? Who are these people? All volunteers get bored of their sites. The question is whether you can overcome that boredom and persevere and be fruitful.

Faced with the inevitable second year reckoning, some people ditch work and head out of town. There are volunteers in every group who end up measuring their service by how many mountains they climbed, borders they crossed, and beaches they visited. In the Dominican Republic, this was called "Cuerpo de Paseo" as opposed to "Cuerpo de Paz". Some people freely admit that they joined the Peace Corps to travel, and that's what they end up doing.

You should travel while you're a Peace Corps volunteer. It may be the only time in your life you're in Africa or Asia or South America, and if you don't see Victoria Falls or the Taj Mahal or Machu Pichu while they're close by, when will you? Take advantage of what the country or continent has to offer. But remember that these trips are vacations, and that Peace Corps is a job and it's service. You don't have to join the Peace Corps to see Machu Pichu. The Peace Corps markets and sells volunteers to communities as professionals who are going to accomplish something of worth. When some of those "development professionals" turn out to be in it for a vacation and seeing the sights, it hurts Peace Corps' reputation.