Raleigh International gives young people between 17 and 25 years old and volunteer staff over 25 years old the chance to live and work on expeditions abroad. Not only do they develop personally and contribute to the country they are working in but they learn to work together with people from different cultures.

Rebecca Riddy signed up as an expedition translator on a Raleigh International expedition in Chile for 3 months. Post Raleigh expedition, Rebecca is travelling in South America. This is the last of her 'emails' back home reporting on her experiences. Check out her previous emails sent to us via remote South American Internet Cafes!

Rebecca post Chile: On to the Galapagos

13/06/2001

Hello!
This is my last day of my extended (but very deserved!) holiday. I am writing from Santiago and fly home tomorrow. It's quite nice to be back here, feels familiar and safe but very cold. You can see your breath for God's sake. I had to wear thermals and a wooly hat in bed last night!

The last two weeks have been FANTASTIC!!! I met up with Jill and Shaz (who I met on Raleigh) and went over to the Galapagos Islands. Shaz and I did two days of diving while waiting for Jill (who joined us a few days later). I saw a school/shoal/group of hammerheads, probably 15-20 of them, up to as large as 4 metres; plus a large number of white tip sharks and then some bigger Galapagos sharks. I found myself holding my breath sometimes! AMAZING!!

Once Jill arrived, we set off on a week's cruise of the islands. The boat was called the 'Darwin Explorer'. It slept 16 and had air conditioning, hot water, a well stocked bar, two sun decks, a restaurant, and a nice ensuite cabin. The air conditioning was great as it was very humid and about 32C, and we sweet-talked the barman to putting our supermarket purcahased food in the fridge – to help us budget travellers out. We had a fab time and got on very well with the crew who taught us how to salsa, and made us cocktails. One night they took us snorkelling to hunt for lobsters.

The trip took us round all of the islands apart from the furthest ones. We usually had a walking tour of an island in the morning, then a rest before lunch and a siesta after lunch (perfect), before doing some snorkelling and visiting another island in the evening. Then it was snacks with cold beer and salsa dancing at the bar before dinner and more of the same afterwards.

The islands are remarkably unspoilt for the number of visitors they get, trails are clearly marked and there are strict rules as to where you can and can't walk. You always have to be with your guide. We had two guides who swapped halfway through the week. The first one, Byron was boring with a monotonous voice and a funny mouth. The second one was a disciplinarian and was always telling us off for walking too slowly. Both knew their stuff and spoke passable if not very linguistically correct English – at least it saved me having to translate.

We saw lots of different kinds of birds. Magnificent frigate birds, the males with big red balloon bits under their beaks all blown up to impress the females (I was impressed), cute Galapagos doves and little penguins, blue-footed boobies with BRIGHT blue feet, big albatrosses doing their mating dance and bashing beaks, boring looking (disappointing, thought they would be prettier) mockingbirds and the finches that gave Darwin the idea of evolution (different lenghts of their beaks). Then we saw lots of sealions everywhere, including when we were snorkelling. They summersault around you and even try nibbling you before turning and swimming away and coming back again. They were lovely, very playful and curious. We saw green sea turtles, especially diving but from the boat you could see them sticking their heads out of the water every now and again.

I did one dive while we were on the boat which turned out to be one of my worst ever. The equipment was shabby and so was the guide. My tank was leaking, not much but I had to keep a close eye on my gauge. Two of the others divers didn't have an octopus – spare breathy bit for the person you are diving with if they need some of your air – which I didn't discover until we were doing our checks on the boat. I did think about pulling out but didn't. The other four divers had only done the course and nothing else, but the guide didn't ask for anyone's qualification books or what experience they had. When I found out they were beginners I told him, but it didn't make much difference to how he treated them.

During the dive, all the others had trouble getting down so the guide pulled them, but too fast, they were all pointing at their ears, obviously in pain. One girl, an Israeli, was very nervous and was too light. I told the guide but he ignored me, and so I spent the dive holding her hand so she didn't shoot to the top. Later the dive guide was holding her hand and then let go, she shot to the surface (from 10 metres, not too bad but even so). Her boyfriend went up after her to pull her back down, his jacket then inflated on its own so he was at the surface. The guide pulled the girl back down, hurting her ears again and it took 5 minutes before he realised that the boyfriend was not with us – he had had to get into the boat.

Didn't see much that dive as I was too busy making sure everyone was ok, and that my air was ok. When we came up I was absolutely furious. Told the bloke he was very lucky we hadn't had an accident. He knew it was a bad dive but didn't want all the bad things listed, said he wasn't interested and said if I wasn't happy, I shouldn't pay, so I didn't!! I think the others agreed to pay half for some reason, I guess they didn't realise what a load of rubbish the whole thing had been. I wasn't planning to go into so much detail but feel vented now so will carry on. I did complain to the agency about the dive so I hope no-one (esp inexperienced people) will have to go through the same sort of thing.

Apart from that one event, the Galapagos were superb. I had my birthday on board the boat. The girls bought me some very nice Brasilian chocs, a bottle of champagne and the chef made me a cake!! After dinner we had a good salsa session on the top deck by moonlight. Great!! The last day of the cruise was quite eventful for the other passengers – the little dinghy that was taking them to shore turned over. We had been using it for the whole week to get to shore with no problems at all, but that time it was very full and a big wave came and in they all went. It must have been pretty scarey and people's luggage and belongings got soaked. Cameras (and one guy's video camera), passports, money, tickets etc all got wet. There were two elderly Canadian women who were quite shaken up, one lost her glasses and the other one was lucky seeing as she couldn't swim!! We were very lucky not to have been on that boat.

After the boat trip we had 4 days back on the main island and did two more dives which were brilliant again. Visibility was not great, only 10-12 m but we saw more sharks, big fish, morays eels, rays, a turtle and on my 8th dive I saw 2 huge manta rays, probably 4-5m across!

We flew back to the mainland on Sunday and I have had a flight a day since then which has been pretty dull. I had a night in Guayaquil, Ecuador which is probably the worst place I have been to, followed by another night in Lima, the second most horrible place I have been to. I did all the flights with Aerocontinente (Peruvian airline) who I cannot unrecommend enough. Absolute tosh.

I am reading a very good book about the discovery of Macchu Pichu, by the bloke who discovered it. Lots of facts about the Incas, like they didn't have a language because the holy people told them the Gods wouldn't like it! They used ropes tied together to communicate, but no-one has worked out how yet. He is quite witty too, in a very old fashioned, posh sort of way.

While I am here I am hoping to meet up with one of the Chilean scientists who worked on Raleigh, he works at the Botanical Gardens. Off to buy a salsa cd now and some nice Chilean wine!

I have had a great trip, did everything (and more really) that I came out to do and have enjoyed telling you about it. I hope you haven't found all these missives too long, and that you are encouraged to come out here and see it for yourself!!

Take care
Rebecca

Further information

Raleigh International currently runs eleven expeditions a year. In 2000-2001 expeditions are going to Belize, Brunei, Chile, Costa Rica, Ghana, Mongolia and Namibia. The three-month expedition is part of a longer programme involving training weekends and workshops. These workshops concentrate on personal development and global awareness. After an expedition, there is the chance to join Raleigh International support groups all over the world, to continue the Raleigh experience and to help others take part.

You can see updates about Raleigh projects on the Raleigh International website.

© travel-quest.co.uk 2001

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