Dr.Challoner's School Expedition

Updates from Yankee 1 and 2 in the Salitre Indigenous Reserve in Southern Costa Rica


Greetings from Yankee 1 in Cebror!

We arrived safely on Wednesday afternoon to our project site after a long 6 hour mini bus journey through the Talamanca mountain range from San Jose. Half of our group are staying in a spare house in the small village, equipped with kitchen and even a flushing toilet and shower!! The other half are living with a local family and their many cute children. One small surprise was that we are not building a water system anymore, instead we are building a classroom.

We are already getting involved at the work site and work is progressing rapidly; we even think we will finish before the end of our two weeks here and have started brainstorming other things we could do to improve the school, for example build a garden and decorate the inside. So far we have been involved in mixing cement, sieving sand, sawing wood, plastering and playing football with the local children. The workmen that we are helping on the site are all really hardworking and keen to involve us. We are also enjoying some banter with them and they find us entertaining; for example our silly hats and our weak limbs! So far the foundations, walls and plastering has all been completed, and the roof looks like it may be finished today. The children come back to school next Monday and we are looking forward to hopefully giving some english lessons to them and playing more games with them.

The group are all doing really well, everyone is healthy (apart from a bit of sunburn!) and are all enjoying themselves.. although the 5:30am start is taking a bit of getting used to. We're all looking forward to continuing and completing the project and involving ourseleves more with the community. Tomorrow the lady next door who owns the spare house is going to teach us how to cook a traditional Costa Rican dish along with a barbeque which we are all looking forward to as it will be a good chance to talk to the locals and practice some spanish! We are also going to have a party tonight with a piñata to celebrate our leader Emmas birthday.. Happy Birthday Emma!

We are having a great time and surprisingly missing the rain! Will update again soon,

Love Yankee 1..

Greta, Ollie, Rachel, Emma K, Millie, Emily, Tasha, Paula, Lawrence, Lucy B, Ellie B, Sheena, Alice, Katie P, Liv M plus the leaders Jules and EmmaBlog update for

Greeting from Yankee 2!

After a very bus bumpy ride through the green hills of Salitre we arrived at Ako on Wednesday. Ako is a small village in an idigenous reserve in Salitre. Its relatively remote, but they have running water and electricity, what a treat! The people are quite shy but we have made some friends and every night someone from Carlos' family has stayed with us in the house. Carlos, and his family have moved out for two weeks, so we have a whole house to ourselves.

On the first day we did lots of training. We learnt alpha, bravo, charlie etc and called the Raleigh office in Turrialba with our radios. The highlight of the day was definitely bath time in the local river!! Who needs a shower when you have fresh water rivers to bathe in?!!

The food has been surprisingly good. Last night we had sweet platanos, so, so yummy! Yesterday we also had a football match with the locals and hopefully will be playing lots more in the next couple of weeks.

Our project is to build a school for the village, which they desperately need. There's a lot to do but we're confident we can get it all done. When we arrived the workers had already done some of the walls, but there's a lot more to do.

Right now a couple of us are at an internet cafe in the local town, Buenos Aires, where we{ve come to buy fresh fruit and veg.

So HELLO to everyone at home, we miss you but we{re all having the most amazing time!!


Hasta luego!
Yankee 2