Today I am here to participate for the 2nd time in one of the "Weekend Experiences" community initiatives. All the topics are really interesting, however, when I saw the possibility of writing about the best school trip I had, I did not hesitate to choose this topic, and thus give myself the pleasure of remembering those beautiful trips I took with my schoolmates 😍. Specifically, I decided to talk about the trip to the "Watau" camp, which was located inside the San José farm, in the town of Humocaro Bajo, in the south of Lara State, Venezuela.

It is worth mentioning that this initiative also gave me the opportunity to rediscover the photo albums that I keep in the closet of my room (because I hadn't gone through them for more than a year), and I feel very grateful for that 🥰. It was wonderful to enjoy the memories that were coming to my mind as I was looking at each of the photos that I am going to share with you in this post. And now, after all that I felt and remembered, I am more than ready to tell you about my experience at Camp Watau.

This school trip occurred during our 6th grade of primary education (2008-2009 school year), when my classmates and I were approximately 12 years old, and we spent a total of 3 days and 2 nights at the camp. I chose it as the best of the school trips because in addition to being the only time I went to a camp and I was able to live the experiences that are part of one of them, the amount of preparation that it entailed was impressive, and how much we were involved in every detail.

First of all, after having the authorization of our parents, they divided us into teams, they introduced us to the students who would be our camp guides, we did fun dynamics with them to build trust with each other, they taught us how to set up the tents (that way, being in the camp, we could do it alone), and then we proceeded with the help of the teachers to plan each of the meals that we ourselves were going to prepare in teams during the days that we would be there. We even had to calculate how much money it would take to buy the ingredients.

When the day of the trip arrived, we started our adventure by bus. We went with our camp guides and our teachers to buy what we needed, and it was really exciting to have that new experience of being all together in a supermarket, we felt like adults shopping hahaha 🤭. After that, we went back to the bus and officially started the trip to the camp site. Along the way we listened to music, sang, played games, laughed, took pictures, and since the trip was kind of long, some took the opportunity to sleep.

When we arrived, they gave us a brief tour of some parts of the place (such as the churuatas, cabins, dining room, etc), they explained the rules of the place, we did some dynamics, and then we started to set up the tents. I remember that the process of setting up ours was not so complicated, but we received help to nail it well to the ground, because if it was not well secured it could fly away due to the wind. On the first night my friends and I were able to experience sleeping in our tent, but on the second night it was necessary to sleep in the cabin because due to the rain our tent was a little flooded 😅, but it was still interesting to live both experiences.

A curious fact that I can tell you, is that since we were approximately 60 students and there were only 3 showers as I remember, we were given a maximum of 6 minutes each to bathe, that was a challenge, but we made it. Throughout the days at camp we jumped on a zip line that dropped us into a lake, experienced singing and doing activities in front of a big campfire (really needed in the evenings to warm up, because we were in very low temperatures), had a visit to the local cow and goat milking, and went for a walk to a beautiful river.

On the other hand, they prepared for us a rally with multiple competitive activities, and I especially remember a race in which we had to be completely lying face down on the ground, supporting ourselves and moving forward only with our forearms. It was a lot of fun and we all got mud all over ourselves, hahaha 🤣 it's that kind of experience that you definitely don't have every day. I also remember that our teachers and camp guides made us a farewell party, we enjoyed dancing all together until late on that last night at the camp.

In one of the pictures in the last image I shared with you, you can see my souvenir t-shirt from the camp. We were all asked to decorate one, using fabric paint and our hands. At that time crafts were not my thing 😅, however, I really enjoyed the process, and decided to write on my t-shirt the slogan we created for our camping trip: "walking and walking we leave our footprints".

It was definitely the best school trip, we lived all kinds of new experiences and it was very special to be able to do it with my best friend and the rest of my classmates. From the simplest activity (like cooking with them for example), to the most challenging (zip lining), they became wonderful memories that I will treasure for the rest of my life.