Gap Year

legit website https://www.discretegunshop.com

I spent one month volunteering in Osa through Green Life Volunteers as part of my gap year. I wanted to go to Costa Rica to experience the wonderful biodiversity and warm weather while both giving back in some way and not paying too much money. GLV was very good for this. I found that the costs were very reasonable and affordable. I liked the fact that I was supporting a small-scale, non-profit organization genuinely interested in contributing to awesome eco-projects, especially in contrast with some of the other big, for-profit volunteering companies that are out there. Janina was very helpful in the organization of my trip. She provided recommendations for domestic airlines and hotels between my international and domestic flights, both of which worked out perfectly well. When I got there, I found she was super friendly and made sure I felt welcomed in my new environment. She provided regular check ins to make sure all was going smoothly at the various projects. You can tell she is very involved with the local community. On my last day, she even gave me a ride to the airport, which I greatly appreciate.

I spent two weeks at the Fundacion Neotropica biological research station. It is located right in the jungle, making it a great place to experience the rainforest. Andrea, the woman in charge of that program, was very nice and helpful, connecting me with different people to find things to do on my off time on the weekends. One time when we hiked out to a beautiful waterfall in the jungle to take a dip. The other staff members were also very nice and accommodating, even though we couldn’t verbally communicate too well because of my lack of Spanish ability. I spent most of my volunteering time there building a vegetable garden, which was good for me as I appreciate hard, active work. There was a range of other thing I did too, all of which were aligned with my interests and values. Some days I would take pictures while Andrea taught classes about climate change and migratory birds at local schools. I helped with a mangrove restoration project one day, and another I helped lay primer on a pier that local kids would paint and mural about the local ecology onto. To me this work was very rewarding and felt like it made a real difference. Much of my off time I spent reading and learning about plants in the library. Overall my time at Fundacion Neotropica was super interesting and rewarding. I would recommend this more to folks who speak Spanish, as the language barrier can be challenging at times. If you have an interest observing rainforest ecology first hand, this is a great place for it!

The latter two weeks of my trip to Costa Rica I spend helping at Osa Interactive Gardens and staying with a host family in Pueto Jimenez. OIG and their butterfly conservation project located in the woods just outside of town was such a wonderful place to volunteer. They converted an old diseased cacao plantation to a biologically diverse garden area complete with a protective butterfly enclosure and a classroom for teaching local students about ecology. Rayner and Colleen are very friendly and welcoming, and baby Lobo is super cute. Clair was very kind and helpful in showing me what I needed to do and answering any questions that came up. They only ask that you work mornings, but the atmosphere was so chill and positive that I always wanted to come back for the afternoons too. I was always made to feel appreciated for the work I did there. Typically we would take care of caterpillars and pupae, deal with compost, or spread gravel along trails. I think the work they are doing there to promote conservation and education is great, and I was so happy to be a part of it. I stayed with Linda Saxe in Puerto Jimenez. Her and her son were very kind and accommodating. They both spoke English, which was very helpful given my lack of Spanish ability. They were very patient with me when I would make mistakes adjusting to different sorts of appliances I wasn’t used to. The food was delicious too! The guest room has everything you need, including privacy as it is separate from the rest of the house. It’s very conveniently located: right in town. There’s a beautiful beach within walking distance to spend down time at. There’s a lot to explore in the town, like many cool shops and places to grab a bite to eat in between meals. I definitely would recommend this to anyone with an interest conservation and a desire to experience Costa Rican culture.

I have a lot to say on frontier, mostly because I bought a 30week program with them... Southeast Asia trail 10 weeks, Fiji marine 10 weeks and central America trail 10 weeks (which turned out much less if you continue reading). The whole 30 weeks cost around 13k plus additional $1700 for open water and advanced diver certifications. So we can average out around $4400 per 10 weeks. I'll be working in US dollars for this review. I'm going to round and estimate but I think it's pretty accurate still.
First off I just want to say, let me be your lesson on this... Avoid Frontier at all costs. I made the terrible decision to go with frontier so hopefully I can at least pass on some knowledge to prevent others from being swindled. I truly believe they are a fradulant scam. This is only a highlight of some of the more major issues as I would have to write a whole book on all the complete failings.
Southeast Asia (Sea) trail: Oct to Dec 2017.
If going on your own for 10 weeks and you spend 5k, you're probably only going to spend that much if staying in nice/private hotels, eating out a lot or doing expensive activities. With frontier you get none of that, with is fine because thats not how I prefer to travel however, what you get is a whole lot less than what is promised and fasley advertised. First off, I've been to many hostels good and bad. The ones frontier goes to are largely in the not good category (though I admit some were fine or good). The budget is for $10 a night. Even at 10 weeks that's ($10/night x 70 nights)=$700 . Okay that's a major expense for any traveler. Next their website claims meals are provided. When arrived, find out some meals aren't provided, no drinking water is provided, the budget is roughly $3 a day minus weekends so $3/day x 5days/week x 10 weeks)= $150. Also the guide wouldn't pay for your meal if you got "western" food. This was not a real rule but one imposed by this guide (as were many other rules she made up in her head). Investment in the project which in this case was teaching English in Cambodia by frontier =$0! It was extremely awkward on the first day of meeting the school administrator when she told us this. Many in the group immediately wrote emails to frontier demanded an explanation. It was ambiguous and completely non transparent business practices. Basically they state that they never promise to spend the money on your project but they can choose to spend on anything such as other projects, "administration costs" and lawyer fees. If you actually want your money to support the cause you choose, stay away from frontier. The school has since dropped frontier after for their deceitful practices, both to us as volunteers /consumers and themselves. Website claimed several activities included, guide denied this. Eventually the group persisted and indeed the guide was forced to give us a refund for certain activities. Other things the guide made up... Can't jump in waterfall because too dangerous (as 10 year boys were jumping), limiting alcohol... She made up random rules like 2 drinks per evening, no more then 2 times a week. This was also protested and guide was told that's not a rule. Curfews... Couldnt go out after 6pm without signing out or having a buddy. I'm 30 years old, and getting treated like a children. Not to mention this guide could not speak any local language, had no experience leading group travel and had only lightly traveled that region before so was more or less useless thus minimal. I can't remember all the travel fees but it's safe to say they weren't in the $3000 range, probably like $500. So you're getting possibly the value of $1000 but getting charged $5000. That is straight awful. A couple folks dropped out (one for medical issue, another due to complete disappoint with frontier), most on the trip agreed it was terrible value and would never use frontier again but nothing we can do about it. Several sued or tried but it's prohibitively expensive trying to go against on your own (remember all those lawyer fees??) so I don't think anything came about. That being said I did get to meet some cool people and see some cool places. My advice... SEA is pretty well traveled so it's simple to go it alone as you'll meet plenty of people at hostels. Or travel with a reputable and reliable company (definitely not frontier) for a short time until comfortable to go alone or meet some friends and travel. Or find a local NGO to work with and know your cause is actually getting your money. There was a girl at the school that just did this and volunteered for free, even got free room to stay for teaching meanwhile we shuffled thousands of dollars to a corrupt company instead of a well deserving school for impoverished children.
Fiji marine: Jan to mar 2018.
So another ten weeks here, 4.4k paid. Additional $1700 for padi courses. So the situation here was different than SEA, which was more travel based. While Fiji was a more permanent camp, not really any travel included. The living conditions were pretty bad here. It was quite remote and self sustained living a lot which personally I do kjnda enjoy. However, if you're paying for a suite and get a dump you'd be upset, rightfully so, this is kinda like that. Obviously I didn't expect a suite, but the water would constantly break, camp was falling apart. Barely a workable shower when I got there. The solar panel was broken so nearly zero electricity. We had one light in the camp that worked. Everything else was personally brought by volunteers /staff such as mini solar lights and panels for charging phones /cameras etc. Obviously no wifi (again knew that and didn't really care) though can occasionally get signal on local Sim card. The kitchen and all equipment was in pretty rough shape. The living conditions in general were disagreeable. Beds were a one inch foam mattress, my back was agony the whole time and extremely difficult to get anything resembling good rest on. The food was cooked by staff and volunteers on camp, typically. The food that came out was surprisingly good most of the time but that's because I suppose we had some good cooks. Meals were typically rice, canned beans/veg. Once a week we'd get fresh fruit, veg, bread, eggs but that would always run out quick before next supply. As far as the diving goes... Fiji has superb diving BUT getting certified was a nightmare. Ideally open water and advanced can be finished in a week. Sure there were lots of additional challenges so they even say maybe 2 or 3 weeks. It took me 8 weeks! You're basically paying for the diving here since as we discussed you're not getting much value from the lodging or meals. So to be low balled on diving was a major issue. Essentially I got 11 dives outside the training dives, which could be seen as the most expensive dives in the world compared to how much the project cost. There were many issues some directly frontiers fault, some indirectly, only one reason was neither (evacuated for hurricane, which at this point shouldn't be surprising to hear that we were forced out of camp and off the island to the mainland at our own expense and actually charged by frontier for using their mainland lodging! That is some reprehensible behavior!). FYI the other reasons were frontier failing to pay for their dive insurance, constant boat and air compressor failures, dive instructor getting sick and requiring surgery on the mainland (I say this is indirectly frontiers responsibility because they should have had a backup plan rather than delaying training for another week). All that said the staff in general here were better, more experienced, and they were quite a few of them. Also the people I met here were mostly cool.
Again I enjoyed Fiji and locals and most of the other volunteers but again it is not even close to being worth going with Frontier. Fiji is very easy to travel solo or find an NGO that won't rip you off.
Central America trail: Jan to Mar 2019.
This was more travel based like SEA trail but again was a disaster. It was so bad it was aggressively canceled by frontier (since we were exposing their lies) and they refused to provide any refund at all. If you thought the other trips above were bad, this time I had enough. Arrive in Mexico on day one, our guide (again someone with limited knowledge /experience but could at least speak Spanish), states frontier won't let us go through Nicaragua due to potential conflict. Okay we were never given any indication of this issue even though it was clearly known ( they pulled this same stunt the previous year) and states in their terms and conditions that they are required to notify us of any major changes and we can choose to agree with those changes or receive refund. This never happened. Guide says frontier will provide transport from Honduras to Costa Rica to avoid Nicaragua (via flight). Volunteers say okay, not ideal but we're already here and can't do anything about it. A week before this flight this guide says actually what he meant that first day was that we have to pay the flights completely out of pocket (about $400 at this point). Volunteers say no that's not what you said, frontier and guide both lied about the origins of this "no going through Nicaragua rule," claimed they told us before which is most certainly false ( they even said yeh we have an email we sent you, we said where, they said ohh we can't find it... That email was sent the week we were moving servers and it doesn't show up now. Well that's not how email works,) and that they have the right to cancel without refunds because of this immient danger situation. It's almost hard to argue the stupidity that comes out of the frontier office as the danger has been known about for over a year, they are required to notify us and give us options, well yeah none of that happened. They canceled around the 4 week mark effectively scamming us out of over the trip. Also this guide frequently lied to us, failed miserably to communicate what we were saying since they wouldn't answer our direct emails, and kept saying "oh well I'm not English native speaker so maybe you didn't understand me" which he used as a cover for the lies. Again also no experience leading group travel and was quite terrible at it in all regards. He also made frequent creepy and unwanted advances towards one of the other volunteers to the point she wouldn't feel safe near him or if alone with him. He also made frequent "jokes" in very poor taste (jokes about things like teen prostitution, indicating he might have taken part on other trips he's done). It was embarrassing, creepy and offensive, even to me, and I'm not one to get offended easily. I was looking up legal documents and talking to lawyers while on this trip to find out if they are acting illegally. Could you imagine doing that when you're supposed to be traveling and exploring the world? In the end, the fight of one versus an international corporation based in another country was too much for me but I really hope they are exposed and taken down, it won't be soon enough. In the meantime I hope to warn as many people as possible of this company.

All in all, I cannot overstate how bad frontier is, and I don't think I'm exaggerating at all. I have dealt with them over the course of 2 years, actively spending about 24 weeks with frontier. Please learn from me and never book with frontier. They are dishonest and misleading, possibly fradulant. Be careful because they spend a lot of money on advertising and If you want to take the chance like I did then good luck but you'll likely regret it.

We spent 2 weeks volunteering in Piedras Blancas National Park in March 2019, based at El Bonito ranger station. We were doing things like clearing trails through the park, putting up new signs and installing trap cameras. We were surrounded by incredible wildlife the entire time; toucans, macaws, agoutis, squirrel and white-faces capuchin monkeys, leaf-cutter ants and many more. Janina went above and beyond to find us the right volunteering programme and make sure we were well prepared. She was also super helpful with any questions we had, and we even ended up going to Panama after we finished on her recommendation. The park rangers were very funny, and patient with our low level of Spanish. Walking around the park whilst on tasks with them was like we had our own guide as they have incredible knowledge of the wildlife in the park. Most importantly, being in the jungle for those 2 weeks was an experience I’ll never forget and I’m so happy I had the chance to do it.