Preparing for Adventure.

The logistics of preparing a long-term expedition are not a cake-walk. The people organizing the BBPP expedition have spent days trying to organize porters (from a nearby village), spent hours trying to barter and order food and replacement parts, organize volunteers, and figure out paperwork and identification passes for each volunteer. Overall, the BBPP and its employees are preparing for a twenty-person, two-week RAVE expedition, and then a handful of us (four volunteers) are staying an additional two months. In addition to each of these volunteers needing to be fed and house, the porters and the graduate students also need adequate supplies. Needless to say, it’s amazing to watch and I’m thanking my lucky stars that I’m not the one using broken Spanish and hand signals to get this undertaking put together.

Just to give you an idea of the large amount of food that the porters will have to carry up a steep mountain side – think 250 kilos of rice, 150 kilos of beans, 15 kilos of sugar, 30+ tents, 20 sleeping mats, boxes and boxes of tomatoes, and two HUGE bags of onions (50 kilos each). That’s not even the entire food supply; Drew (my direct boss) has to go into town at least one more time to get another load.

It’s amazing the kind of the effort and man power that goes into making this expedition a reality. Every piece of toilet paper, every tent, and every person needs to climb (or be carried) up the mountain side. Aside from water (which is purified using a filter and iodine tablets), every single piece of clothing and equipment is carried up with us.

Fortunatly, I heeded to BBPP’s advice about packing light…for those of you who read the post about my packing list, I’m literally only carrying the bear essentials. Some are taking even less than me; another volunteer has claimed to be able to pack all of his belongings into a large daypack…we’ll see about that though