Romeo 4: A fascinating and unique location comes alive

Christopher Taylor gives us an insight into Romeo 4 amazing phase living and working on the prison island of San Lucas:

Raleigh enters its final phase and the intrepid venturers of Romeo 4 step off the boat onto a featureless cement peer. A daunting concrete entrance, flanked by guard huts greets us, behind which is a cobbled grassy road leading up hill to an intimidating, slightly dilapidated prison. We had heard rumours of this prison: the cells splashed with explicit graphite, The Disc (a place of torture and solitary confinement) and howler monkeys cries echoing eerily in the complex.

This could not stop us though. Two days later and we had set up our base camp, barely 15 metres from the east facing beach, Playa El Coco. Our task was to clear the two kilometre trail to Playa Tumba Botes. Neither trees, streams nor the overhead vines could stop us from completing it. Our group worked together in teams to accomplish this. A bridge had to be rebuilt, having rotted in the heat and humidity. Even the pouring rain couldn’t drown - for it was torrential - our spirits as we worked, shifting 10 foot long wooden spars, digging them in and laying corrugated iron on top. For our last mini project we constructed a viewpoint cabin overlooking the beauty of the bay with its tidal appearances of shipwrecks and crowns of rocks, frequented often by the almost prehistoric pelicans.

But perhaps the most amazing part of the whole phase was being able to live within sight and sound of the sea that at night glowed and shimmered with phosphorescence; to camp on an island that is not only a national reserve, but also a disused prison with an intense history; and to wake up everyday with the sun rising over the distant mainland, shining through the mist and creating a stunning seascape. I count myself unbelievably lucky to have worked alongside the rangers in such a fascinating and unique location but I cannot deny that as the phase drew to a close, so to would the Raleigh experience. I challenge any reader, anyone briefly skimming this article, to come and experience what I have.