The people at the project and Lobitos touched my heart and I felt like the entire house was a big family. I didn’t feel lonely at all in Lobitos, the people were very warm and everyone waved at each other on the street. Even though I came only knowing a few Spanish phrases, people taught me Spanish words along the way and were very patient about it. The language barrier didn’t stop us from finding things to laugh about, and google translate was a great help.

After my first week I told Ellie that I felt I could be doing more work and she was responsive and gave me more responsibility at the next weekly meeting. This gave Daniella more time to create a report on Ecobricks for the next volunteers as well. I felt honored to be trusted with irrigating and looking after the dry forest by myself. I did more transplanting on my second week as well. Something that upset me was seeing the young algarrobo trees being affecting by a plague and not being able to really help them. We made homemade neem pesticide for better understood pests and started some trials on it.

I feel that the project is doing impactful and altruistic environmental work that Lobitos is proud of. I wish I could have stayed longer and done more to help the project, but I know the plants I looked after and transplanted will have grown one day if I come back and that I made a small but real difference. The project exceeded all of my expectations and I highly recommend volunteering for them. On the weekends we went out to Talara, explored, went on a boat to see the oil rigs covered in seals and I even tried surfing. Naiana, the VP coordinator, held Yoga classes in the evenings during sunset which were very peaceful.

Overall, volunteering here was one of the most rewarding and memorable experiences of my life. Thank you to the Global Nomadic team for leading me to this opportunity.

One of my best experiences abroad! Peru has definitely left a mark on me.

As a volunteer for the NGO I participated in many projects in such a short time! Time flew! These are some of the projects that my team and I were involved in:

• Planting day🌱! Although we had to wake up every week at 6:00 it was very fun!
• Reforestation to protect the Peruvian “Cortarramas” bird and restore its habitat
• Website translation (Spanish and English)
• Facebook and Steemit marketing
• Buying groceries, etc in Talara for all the ecoFamily
• Writing a letter to the Mayor to obtain permission to install our sign
• Designing and building a solar distiller to produce drinking water from seawater
• Trialling different materials in the dry toilet to reduce water and form compost
• Designing a renewable energy system for the rural health clinic to avoid disposing the vaccines after a blackout
• Checking the performance of a PV system

Apart from this, Lobitos is a great place to learn to surf, go fishing, eat ceviche, watch the sunset, learn spanish, see wild animals in front of your house, and even swim with turtles!

It was sad to say goodbye so soon, I would’ve loved to see my major project finished. Thanks for everything! I wish you the best and that you are very successful with your future endeavours. I will recommend this experience to everyone who asks me!