Superfun Week Without Walls at Punta de Lobos

Natural and Cultural History outdoor learning

Take a deep biotic immersion into Punta de Lobos World Surfing Reserve and the Chilean countryside cultural heritage.

Volunteer for the Punta de Lobos Foundation.
Learn to camp outside with your own available resources as a team.
Surf and Stand up Paddle with Superfun Chile experts.
Discover Chilean hidden traditions from the XV Century at Nilahue Watershed.

Program Theme:

Learn in the outdoors with experts and enjoy this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to become a volunteer at Punta de Lobos world surf reserve for Punta de Lobos Foundation and help save our natural and cultural heritage.

Program learning objectives:

To comprehend our civic responsibilities within Punta de Lobos environmental reserve both as a human citizen but also as a citizen of the environment by joining a park ranger`s journey as a community service experience.
To learn to appreciate and to apply a more environmentally friendly lifestyle by participating in a powerful ecological learning experience (with experts interpretive guides), about its unique species and how it affects all of the Chilean climate diversity.
To appreciate the cultural heritage of the coastal range, a tradition that comes previous to the Hispanic period.
To practice leadership as one whole team and most importantly we will learn to lead ourselves outside our comfort zone.
To understand advanced survival, orientation and camping techniques by having a completely supervised campsite, they will track their entire water foot print in a day, and also keep track of their own water bottle during the whole trip as a basic life skill learning.
To promote a genuine biotic immersion by crowning the previous objectives with pure joy, by having super fun experiences where they can relate conservation of nature and themselves with something that is important for them.

Methods:

The above described goals will be measured by the next aspects in the order of each objective.

We will base this in the land ethics of Aldo Leopold and deep biology principles, students will have a journal to write in the field assignments the teacher will ask them to write and read about.
Students will experientially learn about the Humboldt oceanic current by both having scientific based knowledge explanation but also practical from a lifetime surfer and lifeguard. They will be taught about it in booth theory and practice by riding the current, the waves it is made of and by feeling the wind that makes the waves.
Students will share a traditional lifestyle with local fishermen, salt workers and also traditional farmers and potters from the area. They will be able to actually meet them, ask them questions for their journals, and hopefully make new friends.
Students will be required to organize an expedition meals and team-work plan for groups of 4 students to survive sometimes, they will be given basic kits for meals and they will have they water cut one day and measure our water foot print by having to go to get water and carry it to the camp. They will also be asked to have all the time a water bottle with them.
We will have activities where each student will be asked for a specific role, based in the 4 people groups they will make in advance to the expedition. They will make also decisions as one team and most importantly we will push them out of the comfort zone of the walls into the wind and find their own fear and learn ways to face it, the most tangible one will be surfing but also hiking, etc.
To build the ¨direct encounter¨ bridges between nature and us, and that means considering all of the above, spending a week with us outside having a super fun learning week without walls we will remember forever.

Detailed itinerary in English:

NIDO Week Without Walls 2017 (5^th to 10^th of November 2017)

Day 1 (Sunday)

9:00 AM; Meet at the school packed and ready to go. Transfer to Pichilemu´s base camp at Hotel Alaia.
1:00 PM: Project awareness and brunch at base camp, camp settlement and teams organization. We will introduce the guides and get to know the students by innovative outdoor education group dynamics.
4:00 PM: We will have the opportunity to rest from the trip, try their camping gear for an hour and a half break and be ready for the first actual encounter with the place they will be rangers for.
5:30 PM: twilight stroll; we will learn in detail both the ecological and also cultural history of this unique point in central Chile that was declared in 2013 World Surfing Reserve. They will learn by action the geology history of this natural sanctuary and its intrinsic value.
9:00 PM: Dinner and Campfire. Teams will cook their own dinner seasoned with foraged herbs.

Day 2 (Monday)

8:30 AM. Breaksfast
10:00 AM. Surf lessons. “Surfing the Humbolt current”. We will dive into this special ecosystem with our boards and wetsuits. We will work as a team with the common goal that everyone catches at least one wave, no matter if their stand up or ride the wave on their belly. Educational component: leadership, collaboration, empathy and teamwork.
1:00 PM Lunch.
3:00 PM. Volunteer with Fundacion Punta de Lobos. We are getting to know this place, so we like it and we want to help protecting it somehow. We will join the daily chores of the Foundation personnel. Educational Component: Students will learn how little things can make big changes when are done in collaboration.
8:00 PM. Dinner and group gathering, conversations and impressions about this day. Teams will cook their own dinner seasoned with foraged herbs.

Day 3 (Tuesday)

8:30 AM. Breakfast.
10:00 AM. Surf lessons.
1:00 PM. Lunch.
3:00 PM: Omar Vargas, fisherman and leader of the Fisherman Cooperative “Caleta los Piures”, will talk to us about his lifestyle as a man of the ocean, how he recollect seaweed and all about this tradition that has been in his family for decades.
6:00 PM: Foundation volunteering. In this past days we have been learning and loving this place, so with much more enthusiasm we will work for the Foundation!
8:30 PM: Dinner.

Day 4 (Wednesday)

8:00 AM. Breakfast
9:30 AM. Picnic preparation.
10:00 AM. Ride the local bus to learn about the hidden traditions of this region.
10:30 AM. First stop: Cahuil. We will walk throw the salt mines; know the men that have been keeping this tradition alive for more than 500 years. We will also learn about the birds that nest here…….
11:30 PM. Second stop: Pañul. We will visit María’s place where she create and sell her pottery, know about all this traditional process.
12:00 PM. Third stop: the 100 years Water Mill.
1:00 PM. We will get to the “Poza del Encanto”, an oasis inside this pine forest region, with ancient Chilean Palms guardians of the native forest. In a 30 min walk we will get to the place to eat our picnic, swim and have a contemplative moment.
4:00 PM. We will gather with our reflection books to talk about what we have seen today, the positive and negative sides of every experience and how to help this people to maintain their traditions in a globalize world.
6:30 PM. We start walking up to the bus.
8:00 PM. Basecamp arrival. Free time to rest, take a shower or just nap.
9:00 PM. Special dinner prepare for the students.

Day 5 (Thursday)

8:30 AM. Breakfast
10:00 AM. Picnic preparation for our Surfcamp Beach cleanup Day.
10:30 AM. Surf lessons.
12:30 PM. Picnic
1:30 PM. Beach Cleanup. The team who brings more trash will win an award! Educational component: we will learn by taking action with our own hands on a tangible issue that is done in a grand scale we could all live in a better world.
4:00 PM. Supervised free surf optional.
8:30 PM. Final day campfire, special dinner, seafood, Superfun Awards!

Day 6 (Friday).

8:30 AM. Breakfast
9:30 AM. Group gathering. Share our feelings, experiences, what we like an what we don’t like, share pictures.
10:30 departure back to Santiago, lunch stop at Litueche Town´s famous Tía Yoli Restaurant.
12:30 Stop by Rapel Lake Dam: Educational component: we will close the circle of how human inhabit nature and how we can propose new ways of living more sustainable, Rapel Dam is a good example of the global world.
3:30 Arrival to Santiago

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