Take a walk on the wild side.

I haven't blogged in a few days. It's been a very, very busy time.

The Home Country Volunteer Managers arrived last week. I walked into the staffroom and they were listening to Red Hot Chili Peppers. It was such a relief to have people around who like rock music! We had a really good chat about bands. It turned out they'd never heard of Thin Lizzy. I promptly put on Jailbreak, and all was well. Exchange of cultural knowledge is very important.

The rest of the Volunteer Managers arrived the following day. I knew quite a few of them from the development weekend back in November, so there were many handshakes and hugs, and it was nice to finally meet people that I'd chatted to on our Facebook group.

The next couple of days was made up mostly of training, from medical to radio communication. Oh, and acting out the health and safety document...

Friday night I was shattered, but there was a night out planned in Turrialba. I wasn't going to go, but I knew if I didn't I'd just spend the night with my face in a computer, and I needed to get out for a bit. Within five minutes of arriving, a Jagermeister was consumed, so there was no way it was going to go uphill from there. I drank rum to make me more pirate, decided the barmaid would love Birmingham, and the night ended with a mojito...

Mojito Classico, made with both light and dark rum. Arrr!

Next day, we set off for jungle camp. Two days without internet access. Scary stuff. On treks like this, it's important to put your valuables in a canoe bag so they don't get wet.

The trek to the campsite for our first night took us through the sugar cane fields, where Mario, one of the Home Country Volunteer Managers, took a stalk of cane and showed us how we could peel it to munch on it for an instant, intense sugar rush.

Part of the task involved completing a risk assessment of a bridge with a thirty foot drop below. By chance, a couple of locals crossed it while we were there...

Crazy stuff.

We set up camp on a football pitch on a mountain.

And woke up to this...

We then made our way to jungle camp, where I found a clue to what I came to Costa Rica for!

Everybody walk the dinosaur!

Shit had just got real! I suspected a bipedal herbivore, possibly maiasaura.

We set up our night's accommodation.

And shat in the long drop.

After more training and the like, we were brought beer to drink by the campfire, which made me ever so happy! After sleep, it was back to Fieldbase, put the gear away, and we had the loveliest showers in the world ever. After even more training about cultural awareness and personality types within teams from the Myers-Briggs model, we had some free time. For me to catch up with corporate blogging.

Having previously asked for a translate button to make the corporate blog go Spanish, and having been told that I'd be sent a little piece of code to do such witchcraft, I'd had an email saying they changed their mind and wanted to continue to have both English and Spanish on the same page. Turning it into a positive, I decided that getting somebody to translate it instead of a button would give a more accurate translation anyway, and I could have a bash at translating stuff myself, in an effort to extend my Spanish beyond 'hot girl' and 'two beers please'.

After dinner, the project allocations were announced, basically saying which Project Manager would be going where. It was also announced that I'd be joining the Project Managers for the project planning visit for the environmental project at La Congreja National Park. Adventure! Yeah, I can hang there for a bit.

There's been a lot going on over the past few days. It's been great getting to know the team. On a personal level, I was very excited and proud to see my corporate blogs getting lots of likes, shares and comments from the Raleigh Facebook page. It's exactly the type of bragging rights I need for my job hunt when I get back to the UK: high engagement levels with web content I created for a global organisation.

The personality types part of today was interesting. It got me thinking about the difficulties in my last job, and how a bit of consideration for contrasting personality types in an organisation should be a good idea. I couldn't help but think of it in terms of marketing. I think the people that get by with careers in marketing are from ESTJ type, but the marketers who are revolutionary and forward thinking who are on top of change are from the INFP type. Obviously, with some overlap, but that's basically what I think.

Anyway, enough. I have beer to finish and a bed to sleep in.