I'm sitting in the radio room at field base and the radio is crackling with white noise in the background. I'm still waiting for 5 of our project groups to call me (or call zero, our call-sign at field base) with their daily afternoon sitrep (aka situation report), though most of them tuned into our first broadcast of 'Radio Raleigh' earlier this afternoon, so I suspect some of them have forgotten they need to call in again. Radio Raleigh is a weekly broadcast to all static project groups, using 2 channels on HF radio, bringing teams a bit of news, updates from other groups, football and rugby scores, and whatever else the team at field base want to include. It's quite good fun for us this end, and we enjoyed our local news section about an escaped bull in CATIE grounds being caught by 2 cowboys who galloped past the office yesterday, a new bird species spotted just down the road, and the latest antics of our dogs Splatches and Stupid Little Dog (really, that's his name, and he lives up to it). I'm going to be in this room until 8.30 tomorrow morning (well, I am allowed out but have to take the three landline telephones with me so can't stray too far), on duty overnight in case any groups need to call in and ready to take scheduled calls from 6am.
I did manage to stray a bit further from the office last week, visiting 2 of the trek groups - Alpha 1 trekking the Coast to Coast, and Alpha 3 on the Turrisantos trek. It was great to catch up with the teams and see how they're getting on - and beneath the sweat, dirt and blistered feet they are doing fantastically well. All the treks are tough and for many participants they are far more challenging than they could ever have imagined. They are all rewarded however with incredible scenery, interesting wildlife (I saw 4 toucans and heard howler monkeys on my visit to Alpha 1) and a huge sense of achievement on completion. The other teams in Costa Rica and Nicaragua are progressing well too, building trails, a pre-school, a health post, sustainable housing and a gravity feed water system . Here at field base we love hearing their daily updates and got quite excited with recent news from the team at Carara National Park that one of the project managers spotted a puma.
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| Marisa and Vanessa on our day trip to visit the Turrisantos trek group |
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| driving back from Barbilla National Park |
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| Early morning view in Barbilla |
Field base is significantly quieter these days, following the organised chaos of venturer induction, dishing out of kit and food and packing everyone off into buses at the crack of dawn on 3rd February. Now we are finally settling into a bit of a routine here and have time to plan ahead ready for venturers returning for 'changeover' where everyone descends on field base for 2 days between projects, and then deployment for phase 2.
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| Pauline, one of our Logistics coordinators, in the Bodega (aka my second home) |
Next phase I'm looking forward to getting out on one of the big road trips to visit some of the more remote project sites, after spending most of phase 1 here to get work done and act as duty manager for a few days while the other staff are out visiting projects. It's been a busy few days so I'm very much looking forward to more people returning to field base so I can have a day off at the swimming pool.
Until the next post this is zero, listening out.
