Preparing for Rainforest Camp

This coming Monday is the start of our 5th annual Rainforest Camp in St. Lucia! We will be camping overnight for a week in the rainforest area near Micoud, St. Lucia with about 50 kids, from 11 to 15 years of age! And on behalf of Mary Beth, our good friend Brendan and all the other counselors, can I just say… YIKES! Haha! Actually, we are all really really excited… There is something so amazingly fun about being out in nature without cell phone signal and electricity, under the stars and out with all the whistling frogs, tarantulas and oooohhh the beautiful St. Lucian parrots that fly over in the morning… We drink cocoa tea (like a spiced hot chocolate) and eat bakes (a kind of fried or grilled dough thing), salt fish, green figs and bread fruit, all so lovingly prepared by our head chef Mr. Mathurin and his team of whichever group of campers we’ve assigned to that particular meal. The camp is, of course, focused on a particular environmental topic – this year, due to the large impact of Hurricane Tomas in November, we will focus on reforestation and it’s role in water quality.  We went shopping for supplies today and even had a little pre-camp fun with some of our kids from the Marigot Bay community while planning, water testing, jumping off of rocks and snorkeling.

Although it’s not easy to say how well camp will go, I am so extremely excited and optimistic about our plans for the next week! But ask me how much I like Rainforest Camp next Saturday… my opinion may completely change!