The first part of the programme took place on the Blue Life project and an important part was the monitoring of marine mammals on board The Spartan. Three days on the ocean in Santa Elena Bay left no one in doubt how important and amazing this is.

Every day we collected data on the life of the long-finned humpback whales, which brought with it a very positive atmosphere. There was no shortage of help around the centre, and quick spontaneous action by volunteers to put out a dump fire in the woods, which at this time was facing drought and wind and threatening to spread further.

After a week we moved with the whole group to Palo Verde NP and the park management was again helpful in transporting the volunteers. Three days full of work, experiences and animal sightings, including American crocodiles.

One day, we were unable to participate in a work activity with the volunteers because we received a message that our boat had broken loose from its buoy and it was not yet known where it was. When you are forced to react in a second and go looking for a boat that is unknown and you are an hour and a half drive away from the marina, it takes nerves of steel.

In the end everything went well, our wandering Dutchman was found and pulled on a rope by fishermen. No one can imagine what we experienced in those hours of terror and uncertainty, but we once again stood up to this cruel test. We laughed heartily when we got back to the volunteers, but at that moment we would not have drawn blood.

Finish in Green Life Reserve

After the program in Palo Verde NP, we moved to our forest biosphere reserve Green Life at the foot of the Talamanca Cordillera. Here we had the last week of the volunteer program, where the main activity was monitoring the Eye of the Jaguar with photo traps and an important task was to start work on the kitchen in the project lodge.
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Three weeks went by like water and with a heavy heart we said goodbye to a great group of volunteers who once again put us in a positive mood for human cooperation. Many of them became our new friends.