Staff survive trek and jungle camp

Thursday morning saw nearly all of us setting off for a day of trekking, to be followed by a night spent in the jungle. Each of us had our full trekking compliment of kit - weighing in at around 20kg to carry each, which you can take it from me is plenty. It was a blazing hot day, and after the initial ascent of some 400m up the hill side most of us were reflecting on the 'it is a good idea to get in shape before you come out' advice provided in the staff briefing packs. However, we all made it to the top and were relieved to then find the rest of it was down hill.


A few hot hours later, and after a bit of 'micro navigation' (stumbling around in the jungle) we happened upon the forest clearing that was to be our home for the night, shortly before darkness fell and as the heavens opened for one of the now familiar deluges of the Costa Rican rainy season. Thankfully the Logs team had already provided a tarp shelter - which provided an extraordinary amount of comfort for something so simple. This was our first opportunity to cook on trangia stoves, and to become acquainted with the 'long drop', and after all that excitement we were ready to hit our slightly damp beds by about 8pm.

Dawn broke several minutes later, and we were drawn like idiots from our beds by Ross shouting 'coffee and bacon sandwiches are ready' - only for the harsh reality of trangia cooked porridge and jam to be revealed in all its horror. However, any food tastes amazing when you're hungry. As the sun started to appear through the tree canopy and the mozzies awoke for breakfast Marco taught us some bush skills he'd learnt during his time in the Nam, before we set off for some more trekking.

The next challenge laid down for us was crossing a river with all our kit. Ross had pre-selected a good spot but we were all a bit surprised to be seeing the river visibly rising when we got there. A quick chat with the local water authority established the damn cleaning would be over soon, by which time we were ready for a rope crossing one way, and a huddle crossing back.


To finish the day off Elsa and Emma P made very convincing jobs of pretending to have severe asthma and a broken leg respectively, testing out our CASEVAC (that's casualty evacuation), radio training, stretcher building and team-working skills. Rest assured it all ran smoothly (though I have no photos to prove it, as this didn't seem like a good point to be taking pictures) and both casualties were whisked to safety without mishap.