Saturday and Sunday  7th – 8th May 2022

Emilka wrote: We were so looking forward to the Duke of Edinburgh adventurous journey as we had so many obstacles put in front of us in the past 2 years; we just wanted to complete our Bronze qualifying camping. We knew going to the jungle/forest in a tropical country will have it’s challenges, but we wanted to experience it. Leach socks were in my bag for over a year (borrowed from our friend) as I knew I have to cover myself as much as possible not to get any – I SUCCEEDED, not a single leech!
Misa had some on the front of one of his feet, which bled a lot, but he managed.

Unfortunately, my team was nearly disqualified because another team stole our compass and when we went to return it, we couldn’t find it. Luckily the other team confessed that they stole ours because they couldn’t find their own (they dropped it 10m from their tent next to a coconut tree which was found by one of the leaders) and my team was allowed to continue. We excelled ourselves by making a fantastic breakfast containing tuna sandwiches, cookies, apples, strawberries and oranges and showing good teamwork in our hike that afternoon, taking lots of pictures of all the flowers and plants that we came across. In the bus we sang our hearts out to songs from Frozen, One Direction or Justin Bieber and had a school buses race as we raced the year 9 bus back to school (year 10 won by 10 minutes).

The DoE award people were assessing our abilities of:

• Map reading
• Terrain Navigation
• Team work
• Cooking skills
• Route cards

The best: swimming in a tributry

The worst: the heat