Volunteering – week 1

It’s been a tough but really rewarding week.

Our camp is basic … really basic: bunk bed dorm rooms (with no air con or fan), outside toilets that you have to manually flush with a bucket of water, an outside (cold water) shower which you can only use once every 2 days, meat is only available to eat twice a week and there’s no phone signal, let alone WiFi. We also learnt that the island we’re based on used to be the isolation island for people suffering from leprosy and our dorm rooms were the patients’ bedrooms!

Having said all this, the island is absolutely stunning and the camp base is situated right on our own private beach that is frequently visited by wild giant tortoises. We've now met the voluntary group we’ll be spending the next month with and it didn't take long to realise they’re a great bunch.

The volunteering involves trekking through dense forest to record bird sightings, wading through waist-high water trying to catch wild sharks, climbing coco de mer trees to record growth rates and, of course, there’s the turtle work. There’s nothing quite like digging up a recently hatched turtle nest to discover several baby turtles still trapped in the earth. Freeing them and watching them flap and flop their way into the ocean is an incredibly rewarding experience.