Saturday was an amazing day!

After being in the three different communities – La Negrita, El Barrero, and Rincón de las Palmas – all of the volunteers were able to get together again to go on a hike in the mountains of Coclé.

Participants from La Negrita and Rincón de las Palmas met their supervisors bright and early in order to get the bus to travel to El Barrero where Nuria, Andrea, Sloan, Njusha, Cohen, Abby, Nikhil, Sanjana, Aidan, and Robby were waiting for them. There were happy screams as the participants were reunited once again after being apart for a few days! Once everyone arrived to the school in El Barrero, we introduced some of the wonderful host families and local volunteers from El Barrero who wanted to accompany us on the hike and show us their beautiful community.

We then started on the hour-long trek up the mountain! While there were some very steep, challenging parts of the hike, seeing the incredible views of the surrounding valley, the communities where the participants live in, the staff city of Penonomé, and even the ocean in the distance made it all more than worth it!

After taking tons of pictures from the top, we headed back down the path and arrived back at the school in about an hour. Staff met the volunteers, host families, and local volunteers with cold drinks and crunchy snacks and everyone had some time to talk with each other.

After our mini party ended, the participants from Rincón de las Palmas and La Negrita jumped back on their buses and headed back to community. Although some of the participants were sad to say goodbye to their fellow participants again, it would only be a few more days until we all meet up again on Tuesday to head to Panama City for debriefing!

Here are some photos from our hike: