Wednesday, March 17, 2010

24 Hours of Hiking, Diving, Surfing, Sailing, Serving

What haven't our current students been doing around Central America in the past 24 hours?

Only four courses are out right now, yet they've managed to stay busy in almost every activity just within a small period of time.

The Tri-Country Semester, Water & Wave Semester, OB USA, and SUNY New Paltz have covered a lot of land. Tulin's beaches (in Costa Rica), our base in San Jose, our base in Manuel Antonio, Solarte (in Panama), and Rancho Tinamu (in the depths of Costa Rica's Central Valley rainforest) are all areas our students have been seen lately.

State University New York, New Paltz just finished four days of hiking from Rejas to Rancho Tinamu to Londres yesterday. The reward at the end of the long hike was a great one, though. They headed straight to our base at the beaches of Manuel Antonio to begin their surfing lessons today.

Tri-Country and Water & Wave are partnering up for their scuba diving certification course in Panama. After their final dive yesterday, they woke up to a fun and fulfilling day today, sailing to Bocas del Toro (in Panama), Solarte to help the indigenous community there.

Finally, Outward Bound USA made it back to base today after some adventure-filled days on the beaches of Tulin, Costa Rica where they, too, were learning to surf. For some, it was a thrill learning to catch a wave under the instruction of veteran surfer Carlos "Diablos", and for others an exciting part was meeting professional surfer, Gilbert Brown who randomly shared some watermelon with them on the beach. We managed to catch a few of these students in our bodega today before they head to Panama tomorrow:



And in just a few weeks, we'll be even busier. The Leadership Semester students arrive April 1st!

No comments: