Tag Archives: hot

Leapers and Lions: Rachel’s tales from the Equator

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The Leap team hit the Galapagos

At an early 5am on Wednesday morning, 16 groggy Ecuador Leapers packed themselves into a bus, haphazardly navigated an airport, and successfully made their way onto a flight to the one and only Galapagos Islands. We are those groggy Leapers and this is our story.

Arriving in the Galapagos, many of us are hit with a wave of heat, despite the cloudy skies, and a wave of regret over wearing our jumpers. We are toted from the coast, where our plane comes in, up into the mountains of San Cristobal Island, to become acquainted with our home for the next two and a half weeks. Hacienda Tranquilla is an organic farm run by a few regular workers, but mostly volunteers from around the world.

Our new home from home...

Here we get to be a bit more independent- having no team leader with us, having to cook our own food, and having to scrub our laundry outside with a brush and soap. The day of our arrival we are put to work right way, scooping, transporting and raking out gravel for a couple of hours. We all become a bit apprehensive or the hard work, hot sun, shared kitchen, and extensive upper arm work! The week carries on in a similar fashion, and we slowly adapt to life in the Hacienda. We get better at digging holes in hard ground. We learn to stagger our eating times, except for the day we make homemade pizza in the outdoor oven. We shamelessly layer sunblock several times a day.

The semi-pro pizza chefs hard at work!

By Friday night, we are exhausted and ready to take advantage of our time in this beautiful environment. Saturday the group boards a boat and we all head out to kicker rock, a bit off the coast, to do some snorkeling. We all face our fears and swim amongst beautiful fish, sea lions, turtles and, best of all, sharks. Jumping into the water the first time, I think the majority of us were all most determined to avoid the sharks. But the third and final snorkel, we were are searching eagerly for them. Despite the sunburn, we all deamed the day a complete success.

Kicker Rock...minus the sharks

 

En route to Kicker Rock

Sunday a group of us took a land tour to a lake volcano, visited some huge tortoises, and spent the rest of the day lounging by the ocean alongside sea lions, who remain quite friendly. They lounge on beaches, benches, in flower beds and in the middle of roads. They pop out of unusual places and scare unsuspecting tourists.

Lounging around!

Monday’s conservation project work brought us into the forest with machetes, where we spent the morning chopping down invasive species that were overgrowing yuca plants. As always, every day remains an adventure here with the Ecuador Leapers!

Rachel Gallucci
I’m on a Gap Year yo.

Week 3 in Venezuela: Living it up on Isla Margerita!

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Hola from a gap year in sunny Venezuela,

Soaking up the sun on Isla Margerita

The team are happy and healthy, now into their 3rd week on the beach at Playa Colorado in Venezuela. Yesterday the final Leaper Sarah showed up and after recovering from her flight the team will be quitting the coast and heading for the hills to spend time volunteering in Cairpe – Venezuela‘s coffee growing district.

A quick update on what they’ve been up to since arriving (besides becoming much browner!): Week 1 went well, they worked on improving the appearance and facilities at the school on Punto Morena island, fixing doors and painting. The team had control over the specifications and design of what they did and the results were great. It went really well, they were busy from the start and got to travel out into the Marine National Park by boat alot which is always nice. On the weekend they went canyoning down a 30m waterfall. In weeks 2 and 3 they hopped on the ferry and explored Isla Margarita on the weekend for a taste of the all inclusive holiday lifestyle.

Carribean surf's up!

This week they have been working at Jakera Club and teaching English at the school to 8 year olds. Both are going very well, I am not sure if the girls know it yet but they are recieving a tremendeous response!

Ciao for Now!

 

Brendan (Venezuela Leap project leader)

Kenya Team, First update.

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The Kenya Team unite

Just got back from Mwaluganje. The group is in very good spirits and appear to have gelled together amazingly well.

They have been focusing on the construction of the new kitchen at Ngozini Primary School that we started last week and love Mwaluganje. One of your lads decided to try and eat elephant poop to see what it tastes like. “Wouldn’t try it again” was his comments.

It’s extremely hot in Mwaluganje as it is all over the country at the moment.

Trying to cool down in the heat

The school has not had water for a couple of months now as the water authorities dumped a huge bill on the school, for which they were not responsible. We suspect it was because there have been so many leaks from the mains in that area and somehow the water authorities had to account for it and slapped it on the school.

Anyway, the school has been fighting the water authority and has finally got the bill reduced. They still only have a quarter of what’s needed so we dug into some of The Leap fund to help them out. It was always one of those exceptional schools that actually had water in the first place yet now the kids are walking over a km for water and all of the seedlings for the crop have died. The team is now helping the school back up on its feet.

Dipesh – Kenya Team Leader

Ecuador Team Update 2: Week One = hard work and holi-DIY’s!

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Sofie’s Team @ the Coast: Emily, Caroline, Eliza, Alexa, George, Catherine, Kieran, Emily, Georgie and Hannah Kauffman.

Hello!

We’re all in Atacames at the moment where we’ve spent the weekend on the beach. Everyone’s fine and work at Caimito has been going well. The team have been working hard all week on the school building, first preparing all the surfaces with wire wool and then painting and varnishing upstairs. The two teachers’ rooms and library are very nearly done and started painting downstairs on Friday. We’re going to carry on with that next week until its done.

Noone’s been ill this week and thankfully the medication I’ve been taking worked and I’m now feeling fine again (typical that it’s the team leader that gets a bad stomach!). There was a bit of confusion on the first couple of days here is Caimito when the ladies cooking for the team gave us bread and jam for dinner but I spoke to them and they’re now giving us a full dinner which is good!

Think some people are finding it a bit hard to adjust to the food and bugs but everyone’s in good spirits generally.

Davis’ Team @ the Rainforest: Jessie, Louise, Ellie, Alice, Izzy, Harvey, Hannah Byrne, Eloise, Lauren and Mark.

Hello from the jungle!

Things went well in Bua for the team’s first week on the placement. We´ve been cutting and and organizing tocilla leaves (used for thatching rooves in the village’s communal buildings) since Monday. Because of the distance of the leaf cultivation fields from the community we had to rise and eat breakfast earlier than usual for the first few days, which has been a bit of a shock to the system! We started working much closer to Bua this Monday which means the team haven’t been travelling around as much and are able to sleep in about an hour later…which is poular with everyone : ) Plus, the project will we´ll be working on from now on is building for the community, which the team much prefer to chopping down leaves so that should be an added improvement on the work side of things!

In the very first week there was a stomach bug that went around my group but people seem to be recoving quite quickly, so far Louise, Harvey, Jessie and Elly have had a bit of the the bug, generally it puts them out for two days with a bad stomach and a light fever. I have been making sure they drink enough water, and getting them out of the sun. All should be better by the end of the weekend. Hannah had an upset stomach as a result of not being used to the heat and not being properly hydrated on Monday, but after some rest made a full recovery and was back working with the rest og the team by Wednesday. Poor Alice had a bit of a rash on her leg as a result of an allery to her wellies. I think that´s it on the illness front! Fingers crossed next week wont be so eventful!!

Regards, Davis