vweijola

I arrived in the small community of Estero de Platano an early morning in late August 2006.
Even though I was not expected, because of the lack of communications in the village, I was warmly welcomed by the family at whose house I resided. It was in a small house by the beach with a young couple and their six children.
We discussed with my host what I could do for the community during the next weeks, previous volunteers had tried to clean up the beach and put out garbage bins in an attempt to make the place more tidy. Others had helped out in the school, worked on a reforestation project and built a lookout for the whales that annualy pass just otside the beach.
At the moment there were still several ongoing projects with three different organisations in the community. There was the construction of a house for handicraft, a house for raising chickens, reforestation, and what Ecotrackers are doing - developing ecotourism. Personally I tried to give a hand in all of these when active work was going on. Besides these activities, I helped out at the house, at their plantation and with fishing. For me, being a student of biology, the most interresting part of my stay were my daily rambles in the forrests. There are some interresting habitats in the surrounding areas, sadly though the forested areas are patchy and mostly semicultivated.