All work and no play...12L have a day off

Since the VMs arrived things have been pretty busy with lots of project planning and preparation, so it was definitely time for a well deserved day off.  That's not to say that too many of the group were in the mood for a snooze or a good book - no this lot preferred to go off white water rafting.

LHS - Barney, Natalie, Katie, RHS - Joss, Tracy, David

A bus journey through spectacular countryside led to Rio Pacuare, listed by the National Geographic as one of the top 5 rafting rivers on the planet.  Suitably attired our intrepid rafters hit the waves and succeeded in staying afloat. Apart from the time that they deliberately jumped ship to float down river, at one with nature, looking up at the rain forest canopy overhead.

LHS - Florian, Karen, Martina RHS - Phil, Clare, Tracey

At one point there was a gridlock incident between two of the rafts, very literally stuck between a rock and a hard place.  But thankfully raft number three came along and shunted everyone free.  That's teamwork!

LHS - Sarah, Pauline, Charlie RHS - David, Vic, Jim

After all that effort and adrenalin there was a chance to dry off and get some well deserved lunch.

Pauline and Martina enjoying a scoobie snack

Recce news from Nicaragua

The parties arrived back from their recce visits in Nicaragua yesterday.  Today they've had a chance to tell us about the things they've seen and the people that they met.

Alpha 2 were in Nicaragua to prepare for the Miratombo Trek, which includes the slopes of the volcano Cerro Negro.

Taking in the vapours - David and Claudia, Alpha 2

This amazing landscape makes the climb up pretty special, but the summit is no less spectacular with great views from the top.

On top of Cerro Negro - David and Claudia, Alpha 2

Of course what goes up must come down, and the descent brings challenges of its own.

David making his way back down Cerro Negro, a little quicker than the route up

Alpha 5 headed up to Nicaragua to visit the community of Los Loros, where they will be living and working.  The guys met with Omar, the community leader, and his family.  After a long journey north they were happy to be welcomed into Omar's home as his guest.

Florian and Vic, Alpha 5, making plans with Omar

The project will involve bringing fresh water down from the source to supply the local community.  So the first task is to find the water source.  Here Vic and Florian follow one of the village residents; x marks the spot.

Vic locating the water source

As always Raleigh are happy to be working closely with the local co-operative in Achuapa who co-ordinate the projects.  Alpha 5 met up with Nacho, the Secretary, at the co-operative headquarters and saw the work that they do including sesame seed processing and the production of oil, wine and honey.

Nacho welcomes Vic and Sarah to the community co-operative

If you go down to the woods today...

... you’d meet 12L’s volunteer managers having their trek and jungle camp training.

We all got our bags packed and thought that they seemed heavy but manageable; sleeping bag, mossie net, spare shoes, spare pants – all the essentials.  Then we were divided into teams and given the rest of the kit to divide out; tents, trangias, four washing-up bowls, shovel, machete, bleach, fuel, refried beans etc – suddenly a whole lot heavier and a whole lot less manageable.

Having allocated roles and read the map we headed off, heavy laden and an hour late.  The first meeting place (which we did all find – hooray for navigation training) was a very rickety, disused railway bridge.  
Cue Risk Assessment training.

The question “Would you cross this bridge?” divided the group fair and square down the middle with some screaming “hell yes!” and just as many “you have got to be kidding me!” I guess that’s why Raleigh has a process for sorting this kind of thing out. Having established that risk of death was beyond negligible we turned tail and started walking again.

Camping out that night we all got a bit closer to our fellow team mates and got as much sleep as we could for our 4.30 wake up call.  The next rendezvous was a river crossing.

Water safety is a biggie.  Again it was an opportunity to get close, with the recommended way of getting across the water being in a huddle.

Then on to jungle camp, and the introduction to basha beds or basha hammocks.  For the uninitiated I will explain what these are but if you stay with this blog for a few months I’m sure that you will become very well acquainted with the term.  Basically you have a stretcher like piece of canvas supported by bamboo poles at each end which is then held between two bamboo tripods (basha bed) or roped to two trees (basha hammock).  Then for the home comforts, something to help you stay dry and something to keep you bite free.

Apparently a basha hammock is the most comfortable thing ever if you get it right and the very least comfortable if you get it wrong.  No pressure there then.  With two hours to have their first attempt, and the night, tiredness and hunger closing in not everyone was convinced that they were going to be rewarded with a good night’s sleep – and to be fair some of them were right.  Being suspended in a lop-sided fashion above a nest of ants doesn’t make for a very restful night. But some people slept like babies so I guess it’s something that we can aspire to.

Whisky 3 - Clare, Karen, Dave, Sarah and Phil

Team Whisky 3 – Dangling Dave (don’t ask, you had to be there), Clare, Karen, Sarah (Flynny), Phil and Pauline (out of shot) have asked me to make special mention of the fact that their campsite was twice as far as anyone else’s – so if they look particularly downtrodden in the pictures then that is their excuse and they are sticking to it.

Bienvenido – the 12L project managers have arrived

Our numbers at Fieldbase have increased as the project managers all landed safely in San Jose last night.  They managed to get some brief but well earned sleep before taking the 2 hour bus journey to arrive here this morning.

They were welcomed by a traditional Costa Rican breakfast of Gallo Pinto cooked by Araceli, our cook and new best friend.  The queue for the shower is going to be a little longer, and the cooking pots are a good deal larger but the buzz about the place is the most noticeable difference. 

Everyone is catching up with the familiar faces that they met many moons ago on that training weekend in August (can't believe it was only a month ago!).

This week will be spent with various inductions, training and briefing sessions.  We kicked off with the swimming assessment, to understand each person's level and make sure that no-one gets out of their depth.

Some training sessions are mostly chalk and talk, 

and some will mean getting out there and learning things for ourselves.  

There is a lot to take in and learn but the adventure starts here.

Getting Ready to Host the Hosts...

Keiner, our Costa Rican HCV Programme Manager, has been working very hard over the past few months managing the HCV programme and gathering up an excited group of Host Country Venturers for Expedition 12G/H! There will be 14 Costa Rican Venturers and 6 Nicaraguan Venturers arriving tomorrow, which all us VMs are incessantly busy preparing for, making the place ship shape for our Tico and Nica friends. They’ve been through a lot of their inductions already and are arriving a day early from the other Venturers to get settled in and allow us VMs to practice our Spanish and learn a bit about local ways.

Our Keiner, HCV Programme Manager

Today at Fieldbase we’ve had our final sessions on sustainable development and now officially finished our VM training! Tomorrow we have a last Q&A session to make sure we can speak fully with confidence to the Venturers when they arrive about constructing a basha village and using different tools, erecting tents and operating tricky trangias. Just shows how much we’ve picked up in the last few weeks – it’s flown quicker than Concorde after 2 double espressos... 

We’re all fully geared up for what’s going to be an amazing, life-changing expedition for one and all. Can’t blimmin’ wait (and we don’t really have to!).

Pura Vida!

Leanne and Mau

Antes de la llegada…

Keiner, nuestro coordinador para los HCV’s ha estado trabajando muy duro durante los últimos meses organizando y coordinando la convocatoria de los HCV’s que estarán con nosotros en la expedición 12G/H! A partir de mañana estarán con nosotros 14 participantes de Costa Rica y 6 de Nicaragua, esta noticia nos tiene a los VM’s emocionados y con mucho trabajo por hacer para tener la mejor bienvenida a nuestros amigos Ticos y Nicas. Ellos han pasado ya, por una serie de preparaciones y capacitaciones que los han preparado para su llegada un día antes del resto de “venturers”, con el objetivo de conocer a los VM’s acá en FieldBase, pasar un rato excelente juntos y poder practicar nuestro español con ellos antes de la llegada del resto de la expedición.

Hoy en FieldBase tuvimos nuestras sesiones finales de desarrollo sostenible y ahora oficialmente hemos terminado nuestra preparación como VM’s. Mañana tendremos nuestra sesión final de preguntas y respuestas para estar completamente preparados y confiados para explicar a los “venturers” todo lo relacionado a la construcción de las “basha Village”, uso de herramientas, levantamiento de tiendas y manipulación de “trangias” 

En fin, estamos completamente preparados y a la expectativa de lo que pasara en esta increíble expedición que esta pronta a comenzar, estamos seguros que será una experiencia que recordaremos de por vida. 

Pura Vida!

Mau y Leanne

Jungle Camp continued...

Jungle Camp Day 2

Our group rose before the sun at 4am to the sounds of the montezuma bird (if you heard one, you'd realise we didn't have much choice in that matter!) in order to have a ‘head start’ on getting the camp packed up to leave at 6. However, we all soon learned that time goes pretty quickly when you have to make a meal from nothing, clean up and pack up your lodgings...so it was quite an achievement for us all to leave for the river crossing at 6.10am!

We arrived at the river as the sun was still emerging over the hills – some relishing the thought of getting wet and wild, some slightly nervous of the soggy saga ahead (I personally was in Camp Damp to begin with). Nevertheless, everyone was in brilliant spirits as we were talked through water safety and learning the different techniques to ‘get to the other side’ – but no chickens, or roads, here. The ‘huddle’ technique won out when we applied our newly acquired knowledge to the art of river crossing (and meant that team bonding got well underway, especially when combined with trying to discreetly get changed afterwards – and failing!). All excellent fun.

Once the foot powder had been applied, we were ready once again for the off on another leg of the trek – TO THE JUNGLE.

Now when we arrived in the lush wilderness in the treetops, I might not have been alone in thinking ‘basha’ was the name of a member of N-Dubz. However a few hours of intense training on jungle survival later and we could all build our own ‘basha bed’ or ‘basha hammock’ from bamboo, tarp and a stretcher - who needs IKEA?!  

While we were constructing our cradles we also made a few friends, some of whom let’s just say ‘left a lasting impression’ (Fieldbase, even today, being an episode of the ‘Itchy and Scratchy show’)...

An equally early finish ensued that evening after a scrummy rations meal, our weary bodies (from carrying our own kit, group kit and jungle camp kit up a HUGE hill) calling out for our self-constructed beds!

Jungle Camp Day 3

Another 4am start, and and after some delicious porridge a bit of a stretching and massage session was needed for our backpack weary postures, here Krisztina is the lucky recipient of Fran's healing hands.

We also needed to wake up for our tools training and the walk back to Fieldbase for clean-up. So at 6am we donned our packs once again (by now a mere extension of our bodies) and went off to learn a bit of carpentry, building and how to safely use large garden and earth clearing tools to be used on the projects, which the venturers will also learn when we arrive. We can safely now say that we could dig a hole or mix some cement with full confidence!

Then a last trek back to Fieldbase. Even though we had all had immense fun, we were extremely happy to see the white bricks and Raleigh logo as we approached! No rest for the wicked though as they say - as soon as we got back we were scrubbing the group kit, making sure it's all ready for the Project Planning visits and for when the Venturers arrive.

We've all learned some brilliant hard skills, bonded even more as a team and put our bodies through their paces and we're all dead proud of ourselves. 

Well done to the whole Jungle Crew!

Advance Week ends, and a new era begins - bienvenidos PMs!

Last night, the Advance Team at Fieldbase had our final evening of peace and quiet - AKA our last evening of 'rattling around the place'! Not only were we getting used to the fact we had to share our space which we have got used to swinging a large cat around, we were also reflecting on what's been an absolutely belting week. To help with this reflection, the Photographers put on a slideshow of some of the shots and videos they've taken of induction (with a feature embarrassing moment of myself) which I'll try to put up tomorrow!

At 0730am the next (ie this) morning, after an excitedly short sleep and an hour of intense cleaning, marquee erecting and getting the place ship shape, we welcomed a bus full of giddy (and slightly jetlagged) Project Managers, emerging out of the dust of the farm road towards the office, after a night on the floor of a school in San Jose and a 4.45 start! Their red eyes were wide however as they took in the gorgeous surroundings of the farm and the amazing base we have here in CATIE.

Hugs, handshakes and chest-bumps were exchanged - some people being reunited after the development weekends - and there were a few minutes for chit chat before the most amazing (and much needed) breakfast of gallo pinto was served up to the troops - om nom NOM.

After breakfast, a quick tour of Fieldbase, then it was straight down to the CATIE pool for cooling down and swim assessments - we don't mess about here! The schedule we've got for the next 2 weeks is pretty breakneck, just so we can get all of our training done before the arrival of the Venturers. So the first step for the PMs was them getting their kit off (no time for airs and graces either!) and showing us what they've got in an aquatic sense, followed by a quick 10 mins of splashing around just for fun.

Once people had showered (some for the first time since the previous morning - and previous country!) we took them straight back to Fieldbase for a delicious lunch and some admin, before heading straight into the next training session - comms and radio training. Cue many funny messages such as 'Hello Zero, Hello Zero, this is Alpha 4, Serial Charlie, we would like to have a massive party tonight please...'

Dinner was served at 6pm and then at 1900 hours, Ross delivered a presentation on the projects, resulting in gasps, whispers of 'I want THAT one!' and muchos excitement at the locations, people and tasks that await us in 2 weeks' time. Who is going on which project though is up for grabs and won't be revealed until next week. We'll just have to wait!

We'll just have to wait for the party too. After an intense day, at the current time of 2130 hours, most people have headed off to bed ready for the 7am start tomorrow (6.30 for the brekkie makers, me included!) so this is me, signing off, after the most intense but best day yet.

Hasta manana...zzzzzzzzzzzzzz....