A Wandering Volunteer.

Hiya Kim, Irene, Donna & everybody else!

I have just realised that I have been VERY bad, and not sent an email/picture on my 2 weeks in Costa Rica. So here it is.


The trip was wonderful, and went far too quickly. The only thing that seemed to take forever was the day I left (the time difference for my flight meant that I left Australia on Friday morning and landed in Los Angeles on Friday morning too) and the plane flight. The trip from LA to Costa Rica was a lot shorter, but I was still very happy when we landed...

 The weather in Costa Rica was warm and tropical - a nice change from Australia's winter. I was travelling with 15 other people (1 other from Australia, 3 from Denmark, & the rest from Canada & America), and everybody got along really well.

 I think that doing the volunteer work on the turtle conservation project first was what made us get to know each other so quickly. The week at Matapalo on the conservation project was fun, but a lot of hard work. Not as much educational stuff as we expected.

We were divided into two groups and our main tasks were building the hatchery for the turtle eggs from the nests to get moved into, the night-time beach patrols, maintenance work and beach clean-ups. It was made interesting by the rain - it always poured at about 2 pm in the afternoon and we carried on with our work regardless. We got used to being wet very quickly!

Our days were long: we were up at 5.30am to start the morning activities at 6am, and depending which night patrol or hatchery watch duty you got assigned on you could be heading out at midnight for a 3 hour shift if you were on patrol (that's how long it took to walk the entire length of the beach and back) or a two hour shift for keeping animals/humans out of the hatchery. What was ironic was that I was never on the patrols that found the turtles and the nests, and never on watch duty when they bought the eggs in! I'd love to go back some time & see how it changes.

The tourist stuff at San Jose, Monteverde & Arenal-La Fortuna was fun as well - national parks & rainforests, horse-riding, waterfalls, zip-lining, & a cave tour. Everybody had a bit of a crash course in Spanish, and the rainforest seemed to keep getting better wherever we went. I'll attach a document with a picture board - I was actually impressed by my camera for a change!

 







 So now I'm back at uni - 5th week of the semester I think, and getting busy as usual. A lot different from Costa Rica!

I hope everything is going well at Kumbartcho - will there still be room for me when I get back in summer? :p

Lisa

PS: Thank-you Donna for the backpack - it was a perfect size.

PPS: Does anyone remember a Shae who was a volunteer a couple of years ago? He's now a teacher.