Gap year & Travel News

Kenya has it all: very friendly people, amazing National Parks with some of the most spectacular wildlife on the planet. It is such a privilege to see lions, leopard, elephants and other wildlife in their natural environment. It is such a diverse country with deserts in the north famous for the Samburu Tribe, the majestic Mt Kenya with its glacial lakes and a great challenge to climb, the pristine white sandy beaches and the Indian Ocean with its laid back coast culture and opportunities to snorkel and learn to scuba-dive amongst turtles and dolphins over the world renowned reefs.

Helping in a local school at the coast

It is a stunning country with wonderful people. You get masses of variety and you also get the chance to work in 3 different parts of the country – all this is what makes a Leap experience unique.

Elephant and Wildlife Projects
Located in the Shimba Hills at Mwaluganje Elephant Sanctuary with a 360-degree view over the Sanctuary and herds of elephant. It has the densest population of elephants per square mile for anywhere worldwide.

Here you help on a variety of projects including: teaching children and playing sport, improving the sanctuary, planting trees, searching for elephants on game drives, making paper from elephant dung with local kids (it’s fun we promise) .. and more.

Coastal Community Projects
Located a short distance from Diani Beach on the south coast of Kenya, famous for its shallow, warm, reef protected waters and amazing tropical beaches where you can snorkel or scuba dive amongst dolphins and whales or kite surf. Diani beach was recently voted one of the best 10 beaches in the world.

Here you help on a variety of projects including: teaching children and playing sport, improving schools and water, rebuilding medical centres and empowering women’s groups with income generating schemes, tree nursery projects with local children and marine mangrove conservation.

Conservation and Community Projects in a Private Game Ranch
Based at Rukinga Wildlife Sanctuary a permanent bush camp in the centre of Rukinga Conservancy, in the middle of an 80,000 acre private conservation area bordering the world famous Tsavo National Parks.

Here you help on a variety of projects including: teaching children and playing sport, improving locals schools and conservation work in the sanctuary, water projects, searching for elephants (up to 10,000 in this area), lions and other big game on game drives, animal surveys as well as learning basic survival and bush skills (eat your heart out Bear Grylls), we also support families with income generating projects that really help such as making furniture or jewellery which can be sold.

Imani Women’s Group Camp Ecotourism Project
Our camp is based here primarily as an opportunity for volunteers to learn about various cultural aspects such as cooking, arts and crafts and farming from the women as well as supporting alternative income generating opportunities for the women. There were high levels of illiteracy, early marriage, wife inheritance and gender-based violence, which was mainly affecting the women and the female children.

Our group are busy in South Africa….in week 2 the group did conservation work: they helped take down some fences to protect the horses and elephants during the day, cleared bush and a few trees that were pushed into the road by the elephants and continued to maintain the game reserve.

Team meeting a tame ele

In week 3 they continued with their really effective community work which is making such a difference especially to the children. They have helped teach the children various different subjects (English especially), and also played some sports with the kids. The kids here are mad keen on football so we are getting a team together with a mix of Leapers and Kwa staff – all quite competitive stuff and great fun.
The group also went to the local orphanage and interacted with the kids, playing with them and talking to them, which they all enjoyed a huge amount as it means a lot to the little children.

The weekend was a blast – adventure packed at Sabie, we did some great white water rafting, paint balling and other fun activities which was a lot of fun and everyone came back buzzing!

Hola from Venezuela!

The April Leap team are off to a great start, they are a really positive and very productive group of volunteers and have made a great first impression. In their first two weeks the Leapers worked on two projects here on the Caribbean coast – working on reforestation initiatives and hosting classes for local kids in the community centre – Jakera Club.

Life's a beach for the Leapers in Venezuela

The team have done an amazing job of building a tree nursery right here in the village so that we can plant seeds to grow trees for new leap students to plant in the mountains where deforestation is a serious and  increasing problem. Leapers built 4 raised garden beds and went  hiking in the mountains with local firefighters to find seeds that they will plant at the end of their program.

The other project took place in Jakera Club where the group hosted classes for an active group of local kids. They definetly had an impact because every day the kids came to Jakera and asking when the next classes were and if the volunteers were opening the Club for games!

This week and last the group worked in Punto Morena, a spit of land reachable only by boat. They worked with a local school helping them to improve the existing building, teaching English to the children and helping in any way they can. They spent the night there overlooking the ocean and enjoying the comfort of a hammock and a carribean breeze…not bad eh!

The group have been improving their Spanish skills with daily lessons and are making great progress!
way.

They’re now up in the jungles of Caripe for the next phase of their project..we’ll send you another update soon.

From

Kaitlyn and the Leap team in Venezuela.

Kaitlyn

Leap volunteers featured in local newspaper in South Africa for helping to build a classroom and house for victims of HIV.

Life's a beach in Costa Rica!

Our seven Costa Rica Leapers are now three weeks into their Central American volunteer experience and are in good shape, having recovered from the sunburn of week one! They’re current living and working in El Silencio, a charming village on the edge of a Rainforest, about 40 minutes drive from the Pacific Coast beaches. Arriving on Easter weekend (a national holiday in Costa Rica) it was a slow start to project work but things were kick started in week two, with the Leapers helping farmers with an urgent clean up of the cattle corral of the cooperativa – the dairy farmis one of the village’s main sources of income so getting production up and running was a major priority after the holiday!

How Now Brown Cow!

Stuart in the Wildlife Centre

Village life in El Silencio

That week the team also helped out at chicken farm (a project that focuses on giving women in the community power and income through work) and spent time at the high school, lending their support to El Silencio’s soccer team, getting to know the locals and putting their fledgling Spanish to good use. In the afternoons, when the sun drenched blue skies tend to cloud over they have been spending time with their host families, practicing their Spanish.

Weekends are free time so the team spent their exploring the beautiful beaches at Manuel Antonio National Park. This week they’ve been straight back to work, playing with the kids at the kindergarten, spending time in the Wildlife centre with the resuced animals, cleaning the monkey cages and sweeping the trails, leading aerobics classes for the locals in the evenings and having a Spanish classes with the project leader, Juan Carlos. They’ve also redecorated one of the tourist cabins belonging to the community lodge, attracting more guests and income to El Silencio.

After this it’s down to the beach for our lovely Leapers- for 3 weeks on the Pacific coast preparing hatcheries for the turtle nesting season. We’ll keep you posted on news from sunny Costa Rica!

Music Maestro!

Our trusty team of Leapers are now into their third week of Ecuadorian adventure and have said farewell to Michaela (Leap Tower’s very own globe-trotter) for the next leg of their volunteer placement. On Thursday they set off from Quito in the Andes and headed down to the Tropical Lowlands- an area of Rainforest and home to some of the last remaining Shaman communities in the region. They arrived in the Tsa’chila community of Los Naranjos to be  greeted by the villagers and a musical performance on traditional instruments (not to mention an ‘incredibly loud thunderstorm’!), to set the tone for the next few weeks of cultural safari!

The next day they started work alongside the locals, planting cacao trees (the raw form of chocolate) in the jungle farms. The community’s end goal is to plant three thousand trees on various farms, with the help of Leap volunteers.  They’re off to a swinging start and on the first morning alone the Leapers planted 250 trees!  While the heat and the mosquitoes were not very kind to them on day one (a bit of a shock when you’ve been living in a mozzie free zone at 14,000ft above sea level)  they dug deep, pushed through and finished early in time for a good lunch and a refreshing dip in the river.  Over the weekend, the group stayed in the community to participate in activities such as cleaning up the local primary school, football matches, and long walks around the community.  Today, the tree planting continues!

Here are some photos taken by Sarah in the team’s last project in the Andes…

Meeting the local Llama.

A trip to the hairdressers!

Team Photo- taken by Sarah

Week two in Ecuador started with a chilled out Sunday afternoon, after abandoning plans to visit Lake Cuicocha due to the near torrential downpour. Quiet time is a rare commodity in a team of twelve and so I grabbed it with both hands, listened to my iPod all afternoon and had a blissful siesta before dinner at our usual spot. We seem to go to bed ludicrously early here, and consistently blame it on the altitude even though it may have more to do with us being a bunch of Grannies (not that I’m complaining, I love my sleep!)

We were painting more of the Nursery on Monday and at this point it’s nice to feel like we’re getting into a rhythm and actually achieving something day by day. With such a long community work project you actually feel that you’re making a difference, and seeing the Casa improve slowly but surely is unspeakably rewarding. Having said that, if I ever see another paint brush again in my life, I may kill myself. Or someone else. Possibly both. I haven’t decided! As always I spent Monday morning playing with Ghandi (insane dog) and getting head-butted by children. All in a days work. Lunch is an often near hysterical affair, as we’re all feeling it after inhaling paint fumes all morning, and we usually get served soup followed by some sort of rice and meat. It’s fair to say that you couldn’t do the Atkins in Ecuador because they love their carbs. It’s nice to get some fruit juice with our meals because my body is screaming out for fruit and veg! Well, it’s mainly screaming out for Chili Heat Wave Doritos, but that’s the side of me I try to repress. Monday afternoon comprised of Spanish lessons, as usual. I’m finding Spanish a lot easier than I thought I would, and it turns out that the potentially insane Spanish teacher is actually really lovely. I mean, don’t get me wrong, she’s crazier than a bag of rats but she does seem to know what she’s doing.

Tuesday and Wednesday followed much the same pattern; School, Lunch, Spanish. Tuesday night was a lot of fun, after we tracked down the only vaguely English pub in Otavalo which featured a Darts Board and Jenga (who doesn’t love a bit of Jenga?!) and on Wednesday night we decided to stay in with Rum and hot chocolate.

Some of the girls at Lake Cuicocha - taken by Sarah

Thursday, you’ll be glad to hear, broke the pattern, as we got the chance to visit Cuicocha – the lake we blew off on Sunday. Cuicocha literally translates as Guinea Pig Lake, and is a giant volcanic lake, named after it’s magma islands in the centre of the crater which are shaped like Guinea Pigs. We did a bit of hiking around it’s circumference to get some awe-inspiring views of the surrounding mountains and then got a boat to the centre of the lake. It’s an incredible place, where nothing really lives because of it’s total isolation from any stream of fresh water and it seems completely unspoilt by man, which is a real rarity. We were able to see the volcanic gases rising through the 200 meter deep water and to sail through the ‘Chanel of Enchantment’ between the two islands. We were treated to free drinks when we got off the boat, the name of which escapes me, but they tasted like liquid mince pies. Amazing!

We got back in a cattle bus (I don’t want to talk about it) to get down to Chilcapamba (the village we volunteer in) and had a guided tour of some of the village’s farms and production houses, which was a lot more interesting than I thought it would be, actually. It was a bit frustrating to see the mark up that we’d been paying for souvenirs in Otavalo market though, and I think we all felt a bit guilty buying gifts for such little money off of the community. We were given the opportunity to chose and slaughter our own Guinea Pig for lunch – a pass-time which I had no interest in taking part in and am pleased to report that I am no wiser to the taste of Guinea Pig than I was the day before. Spanish was an even more ridiculous affair than usual, as we bullied our teacher into taking us to the cake shop where we bought her pie and did Charades in Spanish for two hours. Only in Ecuador. Yesterday evening we had a much needed night out in Otavalo to blow off some steam in one of Otavalo’s only ‘clubs’.

Which brings us up to today! I’m pleased to report that despite my various ailments I’m having a brilliant time and am very much looking forward to a weekend in Mindo, which I’ll report back about on Monday.

Az

The Leap featured in the Stroud Citizen offering opportunities in a Gap Year.

Click to enlarge

The Borneo Team!

Hello from Borneo!

All is great out here in the tropics. Our team of seven lucky Leapers arrived last week an have spent their 1st week in at the indigenous jungle community of Tinangol and have gone through their first few days being welcomed by the locals, acclimatizing, and being treated to cultural and traditional experiences. They have also gone to the beach over the weekend (which they described as ‘just like being in Shipwrecked’!) and also straight into project work at the Kindergarten. I spent a bit of time with them at Tinangol on their 2nd day  and all are great bunch, all asking a lot of questions which is great seeing that they are quite enthusiastic about being here!

Here are some photos taken in their first few days…

Cheers
Mel (Borneo Project Host)

A dance lesson at Tinnangol

...getting their grove on!

Hannah shows off her new look.

Az and some of his team mates model their new purchases! - Photo by Sarah

Hey all!

Sorry about my lack of communication thus far, I´d love to say that I´ve been splayed out across a beach getting a tan, but I have been BUSY!

So, week one in Ecuador has been exhausting, bemusing, at times hilarious and at times stressful, but all in all it´s felt like a hell of a lot longer than a week. Staying in Madrid was a lovely way to start the trip; I spent the night in a pretty swanky hotel and explored the city via its incredibly confusing Metro system. Madrid is actually such a gorgeous city and made me re-evaluate my attitude that all of Spain universally sucks. Getting up and getting to the airport at half six the next morning was not so much fun, and the airport itself was actually unbelievably stressful: my flight was in a terminal building completely separate from the rest of the airport and I spent about an hour walking around looking for the right place. When I did find my check-in desk, however, I had the lovely surprise of bumping into some of my fellow volunteers, who (you´ll be relieved to know) are all absolutely lovely. The flight itself was hellish, and Sarah and I started to question whether we were actually moving at all after spending out tenth hour with nothing outside of the window other than the sea. I was VERY glad to have stolen my Dad´s Kindle for the trip and spent most of the journey engrossed in ´The Hunger Games´ which may have made me cry. I don´t want to talk about it.

When we did land in Quito, we were greeted by one of our team leaders, Jenny who took us back to the ´Hostel´ which was far more like a hotel, with a beautiful Latin garden and the most accommodating owners. Quito is a bizarre city – nestled into the side of a cluster of mountains, it´s a blend of new and old, with some parts that look almost Soviet and some very typically Latin elements. We spent the first day getting acclimatised (it´s also 2500 meters above sea level, so I had the lovely experience of altitude sickness again), being introduced to the organisation that looks after us here on behalf of The Leap (Yanapuma) and exploring our new digs. The Leap are a very hands on organisation, and it´s become increasingly obvious that we don´t have too much time left thinking, “what the hell do I do now?”, making a stark contrast to my previous experience in Nepal. Jenny, one of our group leaders took us to some hot-spots including a market (where I had to exercise some serious self-restraint) and a park where Sarah and I managed to rent the only broken boat and nearly capsized.

We spent our second full day travelling from Quito to Otavalo, which is a more rural town a bit further North of Quito, where we´re doing our first stint of volunteering. We had Spanish class, which is now a daily torture, and it transpires I can´t actually speak Spanish (who knew?) and our teacher is absolutely mental.  She seems to believe that the best way to teach Spanish is to gesticulate wildly, draw hugely inaccurate pictures and hope for the best!

Thursday and Friday were taken up by Spanish class in the afternoon and volunteering in the morning. We´re volunteering in a tiny community outside of Otavalo and at the moment we´re painting a school which is a lot of fun, mainly because I´m not actually painting, feeling that my abilities are better spent petting their manic dog called Ghandi and entertaining the children with my endless childcare skills. The village is actually very reminiscent of the Nepali villages I visited, with the obvious exception being that NO ONE speaks English. We´re actually really lucky in that we have three people in the group who can speak good Spanish and our group leader for this phase (a brilliant Yanapuma intern called Lara, who is incredible) is more or less fluent, because otherwise we´d be totally stuck. Indeed, it´s fair to say that I´m drawing a lot of comparisons between here and Nepal, and find myself constantly starting sentences with “Ooh, when I was in Nepal…” I´m probably driving everyone cracked. Friday was Good Friday (obviously) and the village had an amazing parade, acting out the Stations of the Cross and whipping a guy playing Christ. The recovering Catholic in me was loving it.

Over the weekend we have free time, and decided to spend yesterday morning looking around one of the biggest indigenous craft markets in South America at which point my self control snapped and I spent a ludicrous amount of money on clothes and bracelets. I also discovered that I am an amazing haggler, and am now in possession of some incredibly cheap hippy outfits. In the afternoon we went to a waterfall, the likes of which I´ve never really seen before, and standing in front of it was an awe-inspiring experience. We came back to our Otavalon hostel soaking wet after an insane cab drive ready for hot showers and a nice night in, where myself and Catherine made beef burgers from scratch, which were pretty good even if I say so myself.

Today, we´ve had a nice free afternoon after choosing to spend the morning in an animal sanctuary. I hated every minute of it, which I should have expected, but some how I´d convinced myself that it´d be humane. Unsurprisingly it wasn´t. There were Leopard cubs and fully grown lions in enclosures no bigger than my bedroom with nothing more than a slab of concrete to sleep on and a dirty pool to drink out of. I understand that they´re rescued from trade and that it´s better than the alternative, but I feel like this can´t be the best alternative. The sanctuary seemed to have barely made an effort to make them comfortable, and it was heartbreaking to watch them – they seemed so sad and so lonely. The monkeys were poking their hands out of the cages, not for food, but to hold our hands. I felt like crying. We had to hike down from the sanctuary, and it was pouring with rain so we all nearly went arse over tit down the side of a mountain caked in mud. Indeed some of us did end up sliding down the path (miraculously I managed to stay vertical).

A long entry for a long week. All in all, I´m having a brilliant time, and have managed to avoid hospital or incarceration, so I´m putting this part of the trip down as a success! I hope everyone´s doing well in England and I can´t wait to see you all in June or July!

Much love,

Az xxxxx