Survival camp

When I was little I was a big fan of the TV-show Survivor. You know the show where a bunch of people are put into a deserted island or bay and they have to built there shelter, catch their food and cook it and they have all these cool challenges where they can win prizes or immunity and it's also a cool tactical game and of course the place looks like a paradise! Yeah, I just loved that show so much I even dreamed to take part on it. So you can guess how exited I was when I heard that our sport&rec teacher organizes a camp that is a lot like the show every year. Little did I know that this five day dream-came-true camp was about to be one of the most challenging experiences of my life so far...

Our adventure begun on Wednesday after school when we drove to Paradise Beach. The place was breathtakingly beautiful. Our "survival zone" turned out to be in the other and of a narrow path that took about five minutes to walk from the main house to under our survival tree. Yes a tree, a big beautiful tree where we hung our hammocks. On top of our hammocks we got water proof covers. Putting up a shelter became the challenge for the first night. I was trying to be fast because the light was disappearing fast, but I wasn't fast enough and ended up climbing up and down the tree with my little two-dollar-torch. Still I was really exited, we even got dinner the first night from our teacher because we couldn't catch any due to our late arrival and how cool was it to sleep on a tree on a hammock! Oh how wrong I was...

This is the path to the "survival zone"

The firs night was horrible. I don't like tight spaces so I had decided to leave my shelter quite spacy. The cover was tied high above my hammock and it didn't cover the sides completely, since I had only considered rain as a problem during night. Well during the night it got really windy so my shelter was pretty much flying all around and hardly staying on the tree. You can guess it didn't offer much shelter! It was also freezing cold and I can assure you a hammock is not comfortable to sleep for more than few hours! So no sleep on the first night.

fishing

We started the first morning traditionally with a fishing competition. Obviously we didn't have any breakfast since we hadn't collected any food yet. So hungry and cold I jumped on a kayak with everybody else hoping to be able to borrow a fishing rod for a while since I didn't have one. Well I got my try with it and no fish. Actually here's our mighty catch of the morning:


That was by two girls who went netting.
Luckily our teacher pitied us and decided to share he's catch with us and also give us some of the cooking equipments we were supposed to win from the fishing. He's only claim was that each of us had to try raw fish. I had some real troubles swallowing it but I pinched my nose and had two pieces 'cause I really needed that energy and protein.

Crazy Italian ate a fish eye!

 That afternoon me and two others went diving with our teacher. Again we couldn't really catch anything but our teacher shared his catch of crayfish and paua-shell. My defense is that even though pauas don't move they were quite deep and uncomfortable places where an inexperienced diver like me finds it really hard to get. The same thing applies with crayfish but that hardly mattered sine I couldn't even hold one for more than a few seconds. Water was cold but the place we were diving was absolutely beautiful. When we returned to the camp our teacher shoved us how to prepare the paua and crayfish and since the boys had caught some fish we got our selves quite a nice dinner. By the night time I was already sick of sea food and coconut because we got a coconut each to carve and use as a cup for the rest of the camp and obviously I ate as much of it as I could. Having a cup to eat and drink from felt like a real luxury but unfortunately water from the cup tasted like coconut... I went to bed early that night because i found the darkness really annoying. I had made some adjustments to my shelter during the day and it was much tighter this time which allowed little more shelter. I slept better, but the first time I woke up during the night I paniced because I don't do well in tight places.

 Second morning started with a judging of our team flags and coconuts. Thanks to our Italian artist our team flag won the competition and we got a piece of chocolate each and a can of coke to share, it felt like the best prize ever back then... Even better for me because I somehow managed to sleep in and miss breakfast (which would've been more fried fish) but it seriously was easier to sleep after the sun got up because it was much warmer. Anyway back to our second day...

 

Later that morning we had team races on the beach and our team (which was called high-wiz heroes since our color was neon-orange) won the kayak race and some noodles and apples. (yes I was kayaking) That afternoon I felt really tired and I lingered around camp until boys cooked some fish and I got some lunch. By that time everybody had already found something useful to do and I had nothing to do. I cursed myself but since I couldn't find myself a job I went to take some pictures of the beautiful paradise beach:

We tried to make a bird trap out of a bucket with the boys that afternoon and it nearly worked but not quite. We wouldn't have actually eaten the bird but our teacher promised that if we managed to catch a bird we would get chicken nuggets equal to the weight of the bird, so the motivation was high.
 Some of the girls did a three hour hike to get taros, which is like a purple potato that you have to cook for several hours to get the poison out. That day's diving team brought some fish (which our teacher had caught) and we were even provided with some flower and beer for making stick bread. And we got to keep the fire which made the quickly darkening night much more pleasant!

Tarou

My bed

It rained that night and even though I was one of the lucky ones who managed to keep their gear dry I had some trouble to sleep and obviously it was cold. In the morning we had a shooting competition: anything you shot down from a three with two bullets you could keep:

 

Next up was judging of the baskets girls had done last nigh. This was also one of the competitions and the prizes where better than any of us would have believed. Here's my basket:

Surprisingly enough I won and got to take a shower and a beautiful stake sandwich made by our teacher. The best part of the prize was still the cup of coffee I got!
 In the afternoon we helped our teacher to build a bridge and once again we had a fabulous dinner 'cause we earned some more stick bread with our building work and we also had the prizes from shooting and some left over fish. (The weather was poor for fishing that day)

 

 I finally managed to make myself useful by carrying some water to the camp (remember the tanks were 20 litres) and chopping firewood. Good to know all that x-fitt training wasn't for vain. All together the fourth day was the best so far and I actually started to enjoy myself. After dinner we sat around the fire playing games.

And so it came to the last morning at the camp. we had some watermelon and fried potatoes for breakfast and then spent the day packing and cleaning our camp-site. When it was time to leave I was actually feeling bit sad. Time went very fast on the camp.

 This extreme experience definitely taught me a lot about myself. I always thought myself as a self-imposed and plucky person, well... I had to take a double take on that. After all I've lived quite easy and sheltered (literally) life and I a bit of a princess, even a little spoiled in some ways. Though I usually can see the positive side on everything being without food and shower and a decent bed for five days did make me a bit of a pessimist.  But I'm sure after this experience I'll definitely have more appreciation for nice bathrooms and dinner at a table and hopefully I've learned to be a bit more self-imposed and more open-minded with new experiences, even with those that don't necessarily seem nice at the beginning.

Tired

Paradise Beach