As some of you may already know, I spent some years studying Film Production in Dublin, Ireland.
Film is always something I have had a love for, I can remember watching shows about special effects on Saturday afternoons as a child, and seeing my very first film in a cinema, Jurassic Park, when I was six.

While I was in the jungle, in the Cordillera Escalera, I entertained the idea of making a short documentary about Orlando and what he does. Unfortunately, one the more daring monkeys managed to snatch my camera battery; all we found of it was chewed bits of plastic, so that was the end of that idea.

That is, until another volunteer arrived, Valentine, with a beautiful Nikon DSLR.
So with his camera, and the lessons I vaguely remembered from my time in college, I spent a day interviewing Orlando and some of the volunteers.

Continue reading Cordillera Escalera – A Short Documentary →

For a recap, read The Jungle Scene -Arrivals and The Jungle Scene – Trees And Rice

The rain had woken us up during the night. A sudden torrential downpour and howling rain, punctuated by the sound of cracking trees.

When we woke in the morning, the rain had not stopped. It was not uncommon to have rain here, this time of year saw frequent showers, but nothing yet on this scale.
This didn’t bode too well for us, we were supposed to leave, but this weather I didn’t know if we could.

We decided to grit our teeth and make our way to their centre, what else could we do?

Continue reading The Jungle Scene – Back To Civilization →

I’ve written a guest post for the NYC St Patrick’s Day Parade blog, exploring some of the reasons why we travel.
Here’s an excerpt:

I travel because I am Irish.

I believe we have a wandering soul, an inherent desire to see the world; such a small country can’t hold characters as big as us, so we move. We move and we make friends and see new places; and everywhere we go, there is a smile and welcome waiting for us.

Some of us might not hear our wandering soul, or some of us might choose to ignore it, but it is always there.

Read the whole article here

For a recap, read The Jungle Scene – Arrivals here.

I groaned internally as I looked at the plate of food in front of me; rice again.

The problem was that because we were so remote, and because there was no electricity, we were limited to the food that we could keep. Most days lunch was diced tomato, onion, camote, and potato, with a large serving of rice.

It was healthy, it gave us the energy we needed for our work, and we never went hungry.

Still though, I would have loved a steak.

Continue reading The Jungle Scene – Trees and Rice →