Alpha Nine - Conte Burika Indigenous Reserve community project

Nacho, Vanessa and Su give us the heads up on their incredible community project

To say that Conte Burika is a bit off the beaten track perhaps sells it a little short. Conte Burika is so remote, so far off the guidebook trail and so gloriously inaccessible that even the locals sometimes get lost. It’s our El Dorado. And the rewards, if you make it, are certainly rather sweet…

Early on the 6th February, Alpha Nine took a bus from Fieldbase and pootled, intrepidly, down to the bottom of Costa Rica. After gingerly dipping a toe in the Pacific to test the currents, they popped on their packs and marched along the coast for several kilometers, side-stepping tides along the way, before turning inland and up the stunning Rio Claro valley further three hours to the Conte Burika Indigenous Reserve.

The Punta Burika peninsula runs along the border with Panama and is home to the Ngobe people – also known as Guaymi. They are a self-reliant bunch down here – the Guaymi wear traditional clothing and live off the land, growing what they need and not borrowing too much from the reserves natural resources. While their day-to-day life is simple, the indigenous people here face many complicated issues, ranging from losing land to more assertive farmers across the border, to having little or no access to education.

Enter adventuresome Alpha Nine! After recent discussions with the Alto Rio Claro Education Committee, Raleigh dispatched our gutsy group to build a brand new secondary school in this remote outpost, living among the community for the three phases of expedition 10B and working directly with the Guaymi people. The tricky access means that the materials will mostly come from the surrounding forest – a highly skilled indigenous sierrista (man with a chainsaw) will be carefully selecting trees from the reserve for the team to dry, saw, plane and sand before constructing their stilted wooden school. Alpha Nine will be preparing the ground works, including sinking the main supports to raise the structure off the ground and building the base. By the end of phase two, the walls will be in place, leaving phase three to pop a zinc roof on top, finish the interior, pop in some windows and decorate in a suitably creative jungley way. Simple, right?

On location, the team will be living in a palm-topped shack with natural air-conditioning (read: open on four sides), a mezzanine floor (read: two-tier sleeping to fit everyone in) and lots of natural attractions nearby (including a menagerie of bugs, beetles and creepy crawlies). But they will also be enjoying lots of delicious Guaymi cuisine as they get involved with the community here, and have a rather lovely view from their bedroom. No wonder Tico PM Nacho and outdoor enthusiast Vanessa, both Raleigh veterans, picked this project – they’ll be leading out the troops into the unknown along with our super-smiley medic Su. The thing is, will they ever come back? We hope so! Here’s how they got on during the project reccee in January:

Our final project - The Macho Bares Trek - are you man enough? Find out tomorrow!