Project Planning Visit "Corcovado Trek" More of an epic road trip than a practice trek!

 Thursday Up and off at 6am! Although that sounds crazy it is actually becoming a normal time to do things here. Four ladies, one landrover and lots of miles later....we arrive in the South of Costs Rica ready to check out some of our overnight stops and look at part of the trek. Ummm, lots of mountains with very steep hills, beautiful scenery and amazing people. Checked out the hot springs which is on our route, amazing clear water. ( photos to follow).

 We managed to find the most amazing campsite area for the night (Costa Rican style 'Henry's!) with a swimming pool fed from the hot springs.

 Unfortunately not one for the venturers as it has a bar, but we they will have showers and toilets where we will be staying that night of trek, so some perks!

 Friday Up and ready to go again at 6am, I know it's quite amazing! But to put it in context, we go to bed at 8.30pm as it is daylight 6 - 6 everyday, with no gentle sunrise or sundown, it is just light and dark. We set off to check more of the route and a few more of the overnight stops, and a lot more very very steep hills (fortunately in a land rover, but in a week or so in will be on foot, ummmmm). We have visited some very cool ranger stations, with amazing views over the mountains, and as long as I don't think to much about how we get there I am very excited about trek.

 We also found the most cool ice cream shack I have ever seen (photos to follow, but just think of willy wonks meets the mountains!).

 Extra bonus, we will be trekking past this. We reached the village where we should start our practice trek from at 11am ish, unfortunately we needed a guide to take us over the next day and a half as it was through jungle and due to various complications this was not possible (however I was not totally devistated as it was extraordinarily hot and we had an epic amount kit between 2 of us).

 So we continued on with road trip after various negotiations to arrange for a guide for the real thing. Off back to field base. 600 - 700km round trip in two days with a lot of off road mountain roads, amazing views and huge thanks to our two drivers 'Blue and Tess' who were amazing. Due to Raleigh rules, they are not allowed to drive after dark ( which if you saw these roads you would realise how sensible this is). We had an overnight stop in Cartago on a spare room floor of a previous volunteer manager. Saturday Up early and back to fieldbase to sort out the risk assessments etc for trek. Spent most of the day on paperwork and sorting kit! Sunday Up at 8am! Wow, breakfast, team meeting and prepare for a hike around the local area to start preparing by body for Trek. We covered about 10km with full kit, which doesn't sound like much but in this heat and with a few hills what reasonably challenging, but has restored my confidence 'I CAN DO THIS'.

 Another chilled evening at fieldbase getting to know the other volunteer managers. Monday Day off! I decided against rafting and for a chilled out day drinking milkshakes and visiting the local town. Very nice. What more can I say! Okay, I'm off to try and get some photos on the computer so you can all see just how amazing this country really is.