5-week programme with Raleigh, July-August 2014

The main gist: I had a wonderful time with Raleigh in Costa Rica, and despite several logistical things going wrong and lots of frustration, it was a really valuable experience.

The first couple of days were spent doing induction and training at Field-base and a short practice trek for an hour or so to get to 'jungle camp' - a kind of mock scenario for our actual trek at the end, and a team building exercise. Quite a memorable night because it started pouring with rain, I got thoroughly drenched, and it didn't stop for about 4 days.

The whole group of about 60 was split into 4 teams for the 3-week projects; mine was sent to build a classroom in an incredibly remote place called Blori Ñak, which has a tiny school and is in the Chirripo indigenous reserve. Some of the people living there didn't even speak Spanish, but they speak an indigenous language called Cabecar, which we tried to learn a few words of.

The main aim of our project, to build a wooden classroom/building for the school, essentially failed. Building materials were slow to arrive, we didn't know what we were doing a lot of the time and had relatively little direction from the local builder who was meant to be overseeing us. A lot of time was spent waiting for things to happen, or for materials to arrive, and in some ways you could see it as wasted time. But we filled it with other things, like playing football - sometimes with the kids in the school - and getting to know each other. Our team were much more cohesive than any of the other groups by a long way, probably because we had to make an effort to enjoy the time together that we couldn't use to work on the project.
Did we make a difference to the local community? In the grand scheme of things, probably not. We only managed to start the building, laying the floor boards and some structural posts, but even if we had finished the project, our interaction with the local people was fairly limited, which was a shame. The 3 weeks were full of frustrations, but an interesting experience, with lots learned and gained from it. I'd say I learnt more about myself than I helped anyone in Blori.

Then - my favourite part of the trip - we set out for 5 days trekking, with the same team. We walked about 15km each day in quite mountainous terrain (avg. altitude was about 1500m). Such beautiful views and in some places you could see out to the Pacific coast to the West. Hard work and tiring, but so worth it.

Finally, we spent 3 days on an island off the Pacific Coast called San Lucas, which used to be a maximum security prison but is now a nature reserve. This was the 'Survival Challenge', which was essentially just a bit of fun and a kind of fake desert-island situation; we did team games and survival skills like building a fire and skewering fish to cook for ourselves. A lovely end to the 5 weeks, which had ups and downs but overall was wonderful.