Delta 3 - The Story So Far...

Here is an audio blog with some pictures from Delta 3, recorded on the Fieldbase team's roadtrip to the Chirripo indigenous territory.

Enjoy!

Delta Is For Digging

The Delta groups have arrived safely at their Project locations and are busy settling in. Many of them are busy testing out their spades in the classic Raleigh digging tradition.

Delta One in Playa Hermosa are enjoying sunny weather. They have started trench digging and have arranged a night patrol.

Delta Two in Carara National Park are experiencing cloudy weather. They have built their camp and have already finished digging one of their ditches. Tomorrow they will be clearing more of the path.

Delta Three in Duchari also have cloudy skies. They have started digging the foundations for the school building and have already managed a football game.

Delta Four in Tamiju enjoyed sunny skies, while they were busy digging holes. Tomorrow is expected to bring more hole digging.

Delta Training Slideshow

The night right before the Delta Venturers were deployed into the field we reminded them of all they had been doing ...

Delta Allocations Revealed...

Delta Phase 1 allocations, on projects running from 3^rd July to 21^st July, are...
*tense American Idol-style music*

DELTA 1 – Playa Hermosa / Carara (environmental – beach/turtles and jungle)
PMs: Lou and Tom
Venturers: Roberto Mariano Alvarez García, Rocío Mora Vicarioli, Charlotte Lovegrove, Elysia Booker, James Morrison, Janet McKenzie, Juliette Zietse, Madeleine Tudor Jones, Rebecca Miller, Emmeline Brown, Charlie Reeder

DELTA 2 – Carara / Playa Hermosa (environmental – jungle and beach/turtles)
PMs: Fran and Bex
Venturers: Charley Attwood, Silvia Muñoz Godínez. Alexandra Spensley, Devon Weaver, Dorcas (Cas) Wright, Grace Packard, Leon Clark, Luke Bialkowski, Mayci Hicks, Taormina Locke, Daniela Ortiz

DELTA 3 – Chirripo – Duchari (community – school)
PMs: Lucy, Christina and Sylvia
Venturers: Maria Jose Araya, Roberto Vargas, Alice Brawley, Anne-Roos Hesselmans, Claudia R Craig, Darshini Mehta, Drummond Clark, Hamza Amor, Joseph Druce-Oliver, Rebecca Weighell, Ed Barrie

DELTA 4 – Chirripo – Tamiju (community – school)
PMs: Adri, Ly Anh and Martin
Venturers: Tarlaan Mohammadi, Alejandro Montero Merino, Carla Alejandra Porras Vargas, Anna Coleridge, Ciaran Russell, Christina Webster, Lucy Gatt, Niamh Fisher, Sarah Tight, Thomas Topham, Mark Shepherd

So they've all met, had their training and are now getting ready to rumble - in the jungle! Delta Groups are off to Jungle Camp this afternoon to spend the night bonding as a team in the open air while the Alphas have their salsa night back at Fieldbase (not to worry though, they'll be off into the 'jungle' tomorrow...)

Some awesome project groups and some amazing projects - we can't wait to get started!

From Deltas to Zulus

Out with the old and in with the new - our brand new 5 week 11H teams have been announced this morning - the Zulu groups! Hooray for the Zulu’s - everyone say ‘whoop whoop!’ (…“whoop whoop”). Here they are...

Zulu One

Becky Talbot

Belle Tellier

Deenal Patel

Doug Ramsey

Erick Cardenal

Felipe Coto

Fer Zuniga

Henry Bullard

Luke Saunders

Nella Anderton

Sam Berry

Sophie Flanagan

Wilson Woo

Zulu Two

Celia Underhill

Charlie Mann

Fede Lang

Jodie Wall

Kayleigh Carr

Laura Hoddell

Lucy Williams

Micheal Sanni

Ross Lester

Susannah Packer

Trino Chan

Will Harbourne

Zoe Bellamy

Zulu Three

Cat Alabaster

Cristina Bolanos

Daniel Fernandez

Gabriel de la Esperanza

Harry Touche

Jade Porter

Jasmine Chopra

Kate Richardson

Louis de Dumast

Maddie Hosker

Nick Burden

Rianna Kelly

Venexia Walker

Zulu Four

Ava Mayer

Bea Lee

Bella Pringle

Ben Moye

Cata Aguilar

Cyrus Afkhami

Eleanor Pike

Georgie Ward

Hannah Schlogelhofer

Kevin Tan

Naveen Yarlagadda

Rachel Neustadt

Sophie Jenkins

Tom Harley

The Zulu’s spent the morning getting to know their new team mates with a bit of catch up time and a few games. The coaches departed at 11.30 this morning and are currently on their way to the starting point of the adventure trek. They will spend the next four days trekking through some serious Costa Rican terrain and then after a days rest they will meet up again at the mystery location for their Survival Challenge – a fun couple of weeks ahead for sure.

Celebrations as they arrive back at base!

The skits!

Too many birthdays to celebrate

Salsa!

Project Zooloo allocations

Fun and games before they set off again

Group hugs!

For you keen message posters out there, from now on when writing your blog messages for the 5 week venturers you will need to write their name followed by their new Zulu group, so best to take note now. Much appreciated!

The Alpha groups arrive back today! News on that soon.

Pura Vida

*Blog written by Dawn Tennant and photo’s by Kat Mammone, unless otherwise stated.

The Deltas are Back in Town

The Deltas are back! After three challenging weeks working hard out in Costa Rica’s finest jungles, beaches and indigenous communities, the Deltas are back at base, albeit for less than 24 hours. They just about have time to wash a few clothes, head to Maxis for a top up of deodorant, toothpaste and Tang before they head off again to their mystery location for part two – the adventure challenge! And just as you thought that the blog was running dry we hit back with something as exciting as this. This blog is invincible.

Tomorrow morning just before they depart for phase two the venturers will be told where they are going and what they will be up to in the next couple of weeks. We will give them a couple of hours to adjust to the idea, mentally and physically prepare themselves and then we’ll be whisking them off again to said mystery location. Pretty - exciting - stuff!

In the meantime, the groups are getting organized before the traditional Raleigh BBQ and party tonight! Let the good times roll. Here are the final blog updates from our loyal project Comms’ Officers - putting their experience into words, and bringing it home. Take it away Deltas…

Delta 1
So after the road trip left us it was back to normal hard work! The weather brightened up which was a bit of a double-edged sword. More of a tan but hot work! We were digging trenches to stop animals from getting at our precious eggs - alleviated somewhat by a great swim in some surprisingly strong waves. Don’t worry – two lifeguards at all times!

Our precious Manual left on the 19th which left us in something of a limbo situation… we had nobody to direct our outstanding work efforts. Luckily, Ricardo stepped in and showed us his beloved trails. We set about clearing the pathways and the clearing where apparently some crocs came and laid their eggs. That night the night patrol team found an elusive black turtle. A meter long and some big-ass eggs! Our PM’s left us! We were abandoned to self organize while Megan and Andy had ice-cream in Jaco! I’m not going to lie, turns out they’re not really necessary. We basically continued as normal, clearing trails. Ricardo found a baby croc and brought it to camp. It was tiny and completely docile. Who would think it would grow to 3 times a man’s height!

The 22nd hosted the final of the ‘Come Dine With Me’ series. A Philadelphia and bacon carbonara sauce and noodles was made by Trino, Hannah, Nella and Harry. This was followed by some Mango and Lemon. This went down a treat and eventually won!

Our final day at Playa Hermosa – no work, just fun and games with Ricardo, beach Olympics, swimming and of course a BBQ. Some actual burgers and hot dogs with proper ketchup… couldn’t have been better. It was quite sad taking down the camp but I think everyone is getting ready to have a shower and get rid of the week old sand in various crevices!

Delta 2
Beach Olympics: such fun for Delta two; cheerleading, spectacles, star athletic performances and an indulgent peanut eating competition. Our trench was completed with a 4.30am start from some of the Delta two members. Trench digging, passion and dedication. Final turtle shift saw some wonderful and weird events; Siew seeing her first turtle – wahaay! Will and I seeing the groups first Hawksbill, and Em and Kevin had a bizarre poaching encounter. On our final day as a group in the sun we were able to set free 50+ baby turtles! Thanks for the visit from field base, lots of fun was had with Siew’s amazing treasure hunt and thank you from all of us to those friends and family for our lovely blog messages. Our final night finished on a high with an awards ceremony for Delta Dos’ very own turtles and seafood feast, and salsa dancing! Thanks for the teaching from Yali’s snake moving hips. Delta Dos are now in field base making our final preparations for tonight skit! We filmed a ‘Mockumentary’ skit, taking a Big Brother theme. Each clip goes through the jobs Delta 2 worked on and explain the turtle patrols!

Photo by Dawn Tennant

Delta 3
Delta three are happily back in civilization (field base) after an amazing 19 days in Pozo Azul. Saying goodbye to our Cabecan hosts was sad but we were so pleased with the progress we made with them. On the first day they barely made eye contact with us but by the end they had really opened up and one of last evenings was spent at one of their birthday parties being thanked for all our help and being described as their family. We’ve returned from project tanned, happy and keen Monopoly Deal players (or some may describe themselves as experts). We left the community centre almost complete and we’ve been promised photos of the finished product. We’d like to say a big thank you for all the messages from the blog that cheered us all up no end on a rainy afternoon.

Delta 4
The preparation of the site took far longer than anticipated and when we finally started building three days before we were due to leave – we felt we wouldn’t finish it! However, we put in longer hours, worked harder and got the school finished last minute! Hammering the last few nails in was such a satisfying experience! Looking at the complete project it was really overwhelming yet an extremely proud moment for us all. It was hard leaving the community behind as some of us got quite close to the locals. The community had become our home for nearly three weeks. It was an emotional day for all of us!

Delta's - out! All that's left to do now is enjoy a night of fieldbase festivities and skit performances before tomorrow's big, mystery adventure, ooooh! Pura vida todos.

*Blog written by Dawn Tennant and photos by Kat Mammone, unless otherwise stated.

Blogtastic - Delta 3, Alpha 5 and Charlie 1

So apparently the field base team can't get enough of these ruddy muddy road trips and early this morning some of the guys went out on another day visit, this time to Delta 3 to see what the group has been getting up to over the last few weeks. Let's get up to date with their news.

We can't quite believe that tomorrow we'll down our tools for the last time and on Sunday morning we’ll say goodbye to the community who have welcomed us so warmly. We’ve been working so hard on the community centre – shoveling bucket after bucket of soil to level the floor, trying our hand at bricklaying, mixing cement and digging a sanitation trench. On arrival the maestro de obra (who mysteriously only allows us to call him Pollo, Spanish for chicken) confidently told us we would easily be done a week early but the torrential Costa Rican rain prevented this from becoming the reality, although its done little to dampen our spirits. The rain caused the wood for the roof to bow slowing progress considerably. However the bulk of the work is done but we’re all disappointed we won’t see the finished product! It hasn’t been all work and no play of course. We held a party with the community to celebrate Nati’s birthday that was an amazing success – the perfect opportunity for us to get to know the locals and gorge on sweets. We taught the children how to play British bulldog. The game did take quite a while due to the fact that they didn’t really understand the concept of being ‘out’. This Sunday was our first day off since we arrived so after a welcome lie in (until 6am!) we set off into the jungle on a walk lead by Nemesio, one of our hosts. The first part of our walk was up what can only be described as a vertical mudslide but we continued on into the jungle with Nemesio leading, creating a path for us. After slipping and sliding some more we came to a beautiful waterfall only when we were back in the village did Nemesio tell us that he almost didn’t take us due to the snakes in the jungle! Probably best for the more snake shy among us. Last night we were invited to celebrate the birthday of Brandonly, one of Nemesio’s sons. We were given Tamales – a traditional Costa Rican dish of vegetables, maize, meat and rice wrapped in banana leaves and boiled. It was a perfect opportunity to get to know more of the local people.

Delta 3, it’s been emotional. But fear not, more adventures coming up imminently in phase two so hold on to your hats. We'll be seeing Delta 3 as they arrive back to FB tomorrow with the rest of the groups. Next up we have some more news from Alpha 5 over in La Cangreja National Park where they have been spending their days deep in the jungle, working on the trails.

Alpha 5 have survived their first week of living in the jungle. It’s been very wet, muddy and itchy. The camp now has a “shower” (bucket and cover area) and an organized kitchen. We have dug up 2km of piping which is going to be reused. Unfortunately the project to start the wheelchair trail has been abandoned due to lack of permission. Instead we are repairing and improving the existing trails in La Cangreja. So we head off into the jungle in the mornings with our shovels and rakes. On our nature walk on our day off we saw a Fer de Lance (enormous snake!). We also ate masses of fried plantain, which made a nice change to the tradition Raleigh rations of Pork & Beans!

Alpha 5

Yoga!

Blog messages!

PM's Ronnie and Conner - nice effort on the beard front from Connor

Digging the trenches for the pipes

We visited Alpha 5 towards the end of our road trip and were able to relax with the group as they chilled out after a hard morning's work, and tucked into some Guanabana fruit! Now for a little catch up with our Bespoke expedition. Charlie 1 give us the latest as they settle into project life in Cuchey in the indigenous community of Tayni. Written by Elise.

Hello to everyone! We’re all well and having a great time. Our building is going well and we will be putting the roof on soon. The locals are very welcoming. Today they brought us Coca Cola from the shop. Hopefully we will be having a sports day with them next week. It’s sunny and it rains during the night. The highlight of our day is going to the beautiful river to wash and bathe. Our spare time is spent playing our new favorite games: Mafia and Cups! Hope all is well, you’ll be hearing more from us soon!

Pura vida!

*Blog written by Dawn Tennant and photo’s by Kat Mammone, unless otherwise stated.