First tell us a little about yourself and your trip.
Rebekah: My Name is Rebekah Apelt and I travelled to Costa Rica with ISV on January 16th, 2012. I come from Brisbane Australia and am a 21 year old university student. What made ISV great for me and what will convince me to go with ISV again was not the amazing trip they sent me on but how well they looked after all the students especially those with prior injuries and problems. They made they experience so easy by organising everything for you and for first time travellers you can feel very safe knowing there’re always people to help you.
Why did you decide to volunteer with ISV in Costa Rica?
Rebekah: I was at university one day and needed a place to eat lunch so I went into a room that was normally un-occupied. when I walked in ISV representatives were talking about their programs so I stayed to listen and submitted my no commitment forms just in case, It did sound like a good idea at the time. I discussed it with my parents who looked at the 4 places I could choose from and said no to all but Costa Rica.
I did a bit of research later to see if there was a cheaper option or a better option then going to Costa Rica with ISV but found nothing to match the ISV program. So I paid my deposit and that was that.
Describe your day to day activities as a volunteer.
Rebekah: ISV has a 3 stage trip, Spanish lessons for 1 week, 2 weeks of volunteering and 2 weeks of adventure tour.
Spanish Lessons were a great way to learn the language quickly. Amy (Another volunteer I met on the trip) and I stayed with host families who spoke a little English and defiantly challenged us to to learn Spanish faster. Classes ran for 4 days and we had 3 field trips.
Every morning for the week we woke up at 8 ish and walked the 7 blocks to the school, I was in a class of 6 people. Classes went for 4 hours and finished at one. The afternoon we used for Costa Rican dance lessons, cooking lessons and posting letters home. We had plenty of internet access so I was able to post photos online for this week.
On Saturday the school took the 60 volunteers to visit a volcano and eat some fresh strawberries. On Sunday they took us to an Island on high speed boats and let us do a bit of snorkelling. We also went out on a Wednesday Night to a festival called Ram Luna. These were all lot of fun and gave us some great cultural experiences.
My volunteer project was made up of 13 people. Our aim was to get research to make the forest and the golf a national park. We spent the first 2 days adapting the extremely muggy and hot climate that is not so different from North Australia. the rest of the 2 week experience involve us dividing to to groups of 3, 3 people would fix, or build the forest track, 3 people would walk the track in search of 3 types of poison dart frogs and the last 6 people would get in a taxi to the jetty and spend the day on a boat find and monitoring dolphins activities.
During the volunteer project the group stayed in eco friendly cabins, we were taken care of by a lovely host family who could not speak English, we were lucky to have 2 translators/project leaders with us. On 3 afternoons we did cultural activities, cooking, agriculture and fishing. They were a great experience to help the host family out for a bit.
After the last 2 weeks it was hard to imagine anything that could be better but the Adventure tour defiantly blew my mind. 32 of the volunteers got on to a private bus which was ours for the next 2 weeks. We moved from place to place every 2-3 days managing to make our way around most of northern Costa Rica. We started with white water rafting and water sliding, then came hiking and shopping, zip lining and waterfall repelling, a swim in hot springs and another hike to boiling mud, some more hot springs, horse back riding, canoeing, surfing lessons and last but not least massages on the beach. This was an intense but amazing 2 weeks of adventure and was defiantly worth every cent.
It was nice to have a 16 hour plane trip back home to sleep of the 5 intense weeks.
What advice do you have for future volunteers?
Rebekah:
- No where will it say that you will be going out to nice restaurants and need something more classy to where, but you defiantly do quite a bit of that during the adventure tour.
- If you get travel sick take lots and lots of travel sickness pills because in Costa Rica they don’t sell tablets by the packet they sell them individually so you get 2-4 tablets every pharmacy visit.
- Take a back pack and not a bag on wheels, you don’t always have the option of an elevator and the ground may not be anything more then mud.
Leave plenty of room in you pack because some how you end up with twice as much as when you left, even if you don’t buy anything things get harder to pack neatly as time goes on. - Costa Rica does sell sunscreen, shampoo, conditioner, and lots of other things so don’t feel you have to take everything with you from the beginning. you have lots of time to buy the things you need.
- If you love milk chocolate don’t be surprised not to find any in the supermarkets.
- If you love sweetened condensed milk then you are in luck because they put it on everything.
How has this experience impacted your future?
Rebekah: This was my first trip overseas and it taught me a lot. This trip has defiantly made me want to see more of the world and meet lots of new and exciting people. It has also shown me other ways of living with out all the technology that we have in Australia and how to live more eco friendly. The Adventure tour pushed me past my comfort zone and showed me were my limits were.
My Future will defiantly be made up of lots of over seas volunteering and traveling.