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Pura Vida!
The Hass Family arrived today for a wonderful 9 day guided family adventure. They will visit La Fortuna, the Caribbean Coast, and La Selva biological research station, and enjoy ziplining, snorkeling, rainforest hikes, and much more!
3 groups of students from The Hammond School in Columbia, South Carolina, are having a wonderful time exploring Costa Rica! Check out the Hammond blog for pictures and stories from Hammond’s adventures with homestays, rafting, rappelling, and more!
While in the La Fortuna area, the students from Cretin Derham Hall visited Escuela El Tanque for a day of cultural exchange and service. The creativity and artistic talents of the CDH students shone as everyone painted colorful murals to brighten the Tanque School.
Students from both schools had a wonderful time playing soccer, sharing class time, and painting together!
Photos by Clare Tures
The Stanwich School from Greenwich, CT, had a wonderful 8 day adventure in Costa Rica during the first week of March. The students, led by dedicated teachers Shaun Fletcher and Jordan Alper, left a positive impact during their visit with two incredible days of Community Service. Stanwich students made a generous donation of laptops to the Playa Chiquita School in Puerto Viejo. The two schools will maintain the friendships formed on this day via classroom to classroom Skype connections during the school week! Stanwich students finished off their visit to Playa Chiquita with some hard work- hauling loads of material to help to lay the floor for a new classroom!
The following day, Stanwich hiked in a Caribbean downpour to the Melleruk School that serves the indigenous BriBri community. The group completed the project that was begun by the Meadowbrook School, painting and varnishing classroom buildings, installing 2 clean burning eco-stoves, installing drainage, roofing, and a welcome sign for the school!
A little rain and a lot of mud did not slow the group down!
We loved meeting the students from NMH!
Yesterday we said goodbye to our fantastic group of students from Northfield Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts. This was our first collaboration with NMH and we hope to expand the relationship! This was our first group of students that planned a trip completely on their own, it was truly an honor working with these girls. The NMH trip was mostly focused on biology in the OSA peninsula in the Gulfo Dulce area.
We spent the first several days at a family owned campground/lodge outside of the town of Rincon. The lodge, El Chontal is quaint, peaceful and relaxed. We were the only guests at the lodge which gave us a great opportunity to get to know the family on a more personal level! At our time at El Chontal we worked with the son of the owners, David, who is a biologist that has been researching dolphins and frogs throughout his entire life. The hands-on project focused mostly on dolphins, due to the dry season we unfortunately did not see any frogs. The two days we spent on the water we saw over 70 dolphins including a newborn baby dolphin who we named Chiquitito, which means very small in Spanish. Our afternoons at El Chontal were spent hiking through the rainforest and hiking to Rincon to play soccer and eat ceviche at a small local restaurant. Each night we crawled into bed exhausted and excited for the next part of the trip…Iguana Lodge! Our time at El Chontal was magical. We were so lucky to have that opportunity and work so closely with the dolphins and David!
Annie, Kyra and Margaret saying goodbye to David after a wonderful stay at his family's lodge!
We spent the last couple days in Puerto Jimenez at a funky beach eco-lodge, Iguana Lodge. On our ride from Rincon to Puerto Jimenez Kyra spotted a sloth crossing the road! We immediately got out of the van and watched the sloth make its way across the road. As we got closer the sloth (who we named Alvin) he began reaching for us instead of the trees, so Francisco ended up picking up Alvin and placing him in the tree to be sure he was safe from cars. This was a once in a life time opportunity and the girls were so excited they got to see a sloth…and that close too!
At Iguana Lodge we kayaked the mangroves, hiked Corcovado National Park from Carate, spotted hundreds of monkeys (seriously!), swam in the ocean, learned how to open a coconut and much more! We enjoyed meeting the owners of Iguana Lodge and the locals in the area. We were all sad to say goodbye to the OSA but excited to head back to San Jose for an exciting day of rafting!
Upon our arrival to San Jose we met up with Chill, Eddie and Brian for an incredible dinner. The girls were so excited to meet the owners of CRA and finally meet Brian, they started planning their trip with Brian in October! We had an excellent day of rafting the following day and agreed it was the perfect ending to a perfect trip.
This blog post does not do our trip justice so please take a look at the blog the girls have! They posted their notes from each night and will continue to post pictures as will I. Check out their blog!! http://chicasencostarica.wordpress.com/
Annie, Margaret and Kyra it was a pleasure having you down here and we can not wait to see you in the near future!
The Cretin-Derham Hall group arrived ready to work and they actually exceeded expectations with all their hard work and efforts. CDH professor Julie Quinn-Kiernan who traveled with us last year was so inspired by the Green Iguana conservation project that she returned to school with a big idea. Write a grant to help the Iguana project and bring a group of well prepared students to Costa Rica to make it happen. Well, her dream became a reality and big change was made. We completed all planned projects and more. Audrey, Lucas and I were so impressed with the students and their passion for progress.
Margot (student) shared with me while putting a base on a tree to put in the cage, “This just feels good to make all this change and help the iguanas.”
We competed a new iguana cage with a tree inside, painted educational signs and covered the viewing area with new gravel. The place looks great! Lucas and Gloria (founders of the project) AND the iguanas were filled with happiness and gratitude.
