We had that discussion here b4:
http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...ing-here-71499

We like it and used it a lot during our trip, spam you get anyhow all the time, who is answering to this kind of mails shouldn´t use the net anyhow...
Sometime using CS turns out to be rather complicated, mostly in major cities where the hosts get 100´s of request a week. So we left it for the more rural areas where the people are happy to meet new folks... The worst was Melbourne, tsss, these guys wanted to have a questionnaire filled out b4 you arrive and gave you some "nice" puzzles as well in order to "qualify to stay with them" we skipped Melbourne because of this altogether and went to Tasi and surfed with a super guy which offered us his beach house for 11 weeks… We installed for him a new fence around the house during our stay and some other small works in the garden and it turned out to be a real Win/Win situation for all of us. When we left, realizing that we asked to stay for 3 nights and left after 11 weeks, the guy asked us to stay for some time more, but “unfortunately” the journey had to go on… Needless to say that we found a good friend for life!

We surfed with a guy in the outback, a farm the size of a quater of Germany, next bus stop, or city 300km awy, clearly stated in his profile. It was a real insight of big scale farming. But he told us he had lot of requests like "yeah we like o party and are not afraid of big cities, when we can come?"


So yes, we recommend CS, but as always, you have think a bit and to choose wisely where you are going to surf or who to host…

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Round the world by bike. www.RTWbyBIKE.com