Hello everyone and welcome to Samaipata!
By Jose, Group Instructor
Since the moment our students arrived in Bolivia, we have moved to Samaipata. This beautiful town is located right at the edge of the Andes and the Amazon rainforest.
We are staying in a beautiful hotel which has an incredible view of the town and the mountains around this place.
During the first week of the program, we take some days for our orientation. This is a very important moment to get to know each other, have different workshops, and learn about the importance of our safety as individuals and as a group. We had different dynamics during these days, but today we did something different.
¡We had our first outdoor adventure! Today we visited “El Fuerte,” which was a really important astronomical place for the Incas and pre-Inca cultures in this part of the Andes. This was the perfect place to learn about one of the components of our program, which is trekking. We shared different dynamics during the hike and covered many topics of risk management in trekking too.
There was a special moment where Mac, Justin, and Jose shared and showed the rest of the group how to make a stretcher using backpacks and hiking poles. After this, the group carried the stretcher with a person on top. The message was very clear: “Take care of yourself, take care of the group, and don’t take unnecessary risks.”
Here we share some pictures of these first days, and we promise that our students will start to submit their own “Yaks” very soon.
Regards from the I-Team!
