11 September 2018
Instead of spending the first three weeks of the summer holiday relaxing on beach, 34 girls and four teachers embarked on an expedition to Ecuador with Camps International. Many of the girls had spent the last year fundraising to pay for the trip, so there was much excitement and anticipation when we met at Heathrow.
For the first week we were all together in Camp Macquipacuna in the cloud forest. Here we did various pieces of project work to contribute to the conservation of the area. For the following two weeks the group split into two, in turn heading to the Andes for the trek element of the trip and into the Amazon for community-based project work. For many in the group the trek in the Andes was the most challenging part of the expedition, both physically and mentally, but everyone rose to the challenge and reached the three summits, all of them over 4000m high.
The camps in the Amazon were very different to the experience in the Andes - and not just because it was over 20 degrees warmer! The project work varied from helping to build a community garden to digging the foundations for water collectors, which involved becoming experts in cement mixing. The group returned to the UK exhausted but full of stories to share and memories to cherish.
Miss Georgie Noble
