DAY SEIS (6), C.A.P. Day 1!!!

Hola from Panama, Day 6 of our magnifico trip! Today was our first day of our C.A.P. (Community Action Project) Day project. Today we started our morning with a beautiful tangy red and orange sunrise with an early wake up call. Then an immediate shift to catching up on sleep as we got on the bus on ride to our CAP day location, Playa Venao!! Once we finally arrived after an hour-long ride, we got ourselves ready for a difficult day ahead of us, starting off with an amazing yoga session with our site supervisor Alexandra from Save the Turtles. Then, from there we took off with a planned and thought-out presentation to Alexandra and her team of our plan to reach our project’s goals.

To talk more about the CAP project – we were assigned a partnership with the Save the Turtles organization and if you couldn’t get it from the name, we are saving the tortugas (turtles)!!!!!! To sum it up, we are digging and sifting sand in a turtle nest nursery, so that it can be used to nurture and grow native Olive Ridley sea turtle eggs, as an attempt to reverse the population shrinkage. As stated before, we dug 106cm (~1.5ft) deep rectangular holes that could fit at least 8 of us in one hole, while sifting the sand like we’re diggin for gold during the gold rush back in the good ole days. Jokes aside, this is very important work. The best conditions for the turtle eggs requires clean, clutter-less sand. The work was very intense and demanding, but considering it was our first day, we actually exceeded expectations and got a lot of the areas cleaned. Everyone gave it their best and worked so hard!! And as group Leaders of the Day (Sharon & Cody) we can happily say that we are very proud of all the work the group has put in!!! Especially to the girls!! Go, go gurl powwaa!!

But despite the long, hard day’s work, we had an amazing time! With music blasting and motivating us, amazing snack breaks, and best of all nice-not-tooo.. hot of a day at an beautifully scenic beach. The refreshing seawater was a great reward for the day’s work. Finally after ending our CAP with an lovely lunch, we made our way back to the hotel blasting la música and then putting together a new ground-breaking A Cappella group that kept us going when we tragically lost a great man Big Red the speaker box 🙁 But with the loss our dear friend the Big Red we gained a new speaker!! Our guest speaker Margaret, who will also be working with us for one of our projects, is the founder of an organization that takes care of a protected area of beach that is very important to the environment and ecosystem. Finally we ended our day with yet another thrilling dinn’a and introduction of our new Leaders of the Day. Congratulations and good luck to newly inaugurated leaders Kelly & Eduardo!!!

But, yes thus ends our time in this first C.A.P. Day! Thank you to everyone for supporting and commenting!