First week in the rain forest

One 10 hour flight, an over night stay in a hotel (where I promptly realised I'd brought entirely the wrong adaptors for Brazil), a 5 hour bus and a 2 hour taxi and I finally make it to Iracambi. At this point I really should give a shout out to the wonderful taxi driver who battled some seriously muddy roads to get me here. He didn't speak English, I don't speak Portuguese. But by a combination of the odd word in common, some Spanish and a lot of hilarious miming we managed to communicate and get me to the right place.

I arrived on a Sunday when most of the other volunteers had gone on a camping trip. There was also no WiFi due to a storm so it was definitely slightly surreal. If I'm being totally honest this was my first wobble (not knowing really where I was and not being able to talk to anyone from home). But never underestimate the comfort an emergency stash of tea and biscuits can bring.

On Monday I had a meeting with Binka (the founder and president of Iracmabi) and Rogeria (the volunteer co-coordinator) to work through what the main priorities should be while I'm here. As they've been without a marketer for some time it because clear that initially a lot of my work would be getting their channels up dated and making sure they are up to scratch. This included editing pages on a new website, updating their profiles on the main online volunteering platforms and rewriting the set of emails they send potential volunteers at each stage of their application- all aimed at making the Iracmabi programs stand out and entice as many new volunteers as possible. My biggest action we to get their database of previous volunteer info into one location and use this as the basis to create a quarterly Volunteer newsletter. I came away feeling really motivated and positive, already seeing so many areas that we could work together on. And with the WiFi back up and running I was able to crack on quite quickly

....and then the rain came. And my god did it rain. Storms knocked out the internet gain on Wednesday evening and we were going to have to wait until Monday before it could be repaired as staff couldn't get through on the roads! So with little work do be done we decided to go for a hike on Thursday afternoon. All was going well until another deluge from the mountains hit us. We looked like we’d swum home…not entirely sure my “waterproof” hiking boots will ever be the same again! This was basically my view for the next 4 days (not captured here is the loudest thunder I have ever heard in my entire life- almost had me hiding under the bed!)

This is probably the thing I've found most difficult since I've been here. Apart from being soaked and everything taking an age to dry, it was really, really hard not being able to talk to anyone back home for such a long time. You don't appreciate how reliant we are on our phones to do everything for us. Added to which I felt terrible at not being able to progress any of the work I'd started!

The best thing to come out of the weekend was that being house bound actually gave me the chance to get to know the other volunteers here. Some of them had arrived shortly before me so we were all pretty new. We watched movies -that Leor from Tel Aviv had brought already downloaded-, made popcorn and chatted. Apart from the fact that I am old enough to be everyone's great-Aunt they are a really lovely bunch of people and I'm so impressed at their passion for the environment, and enthusiasm for life here at Iracambi.