Volunteering at Aldea Luna…

Volunteering… is this really the correct title for this post? This is the question I keep asking myself…

Aldea Luna certainly advertises their ‘Living in Nature‘ program as a volunteer program, but having managed volunteers for a job for quite some time, and having had to live and breathe volunteer best practice for many years… to me our time spent working in Aldea Luna was more a program allowing people to work in order to subsidise the cost of their stay (i.e. the cost of the dorm bed and 3 meals a day…)…

Anyway, regardless of semantics, every day we spent at Aldea Luna (except Saturday and Sunday, that is, as those were our days off!) we went to work each morning after breakfast…

Our tasks were never quite the same… and some were more enjoyable than others…

On more than one occasion we spent the morning outside in the garden! Gardening tasks ranged from weeding garden borders near the guest cabin so the garden ‘looked nice’ when guests arrived… to working in the vegetable garden – where a little more skill was needed… In the vegetable garden we continued with the weeding (diligently making sure we only took out the weeds and not the veggies!)… we also transplanted leeks and cabbages from their safe home in little pots to the garden so that they could get big enough to eat (not while we were still there though… we weren’t prepared to stay at Aldea Luna that long!?!). And then there was building a small surround to support the peas that were starting to get bored of growing upwards and had decided to lie flat on the ground…

Check out our handy work in the garden 🙂

Check out the weed-free border… our task the day before guests arrived was to make the garden look nice around their cabin!
CC and another volunteer trying to protect the leeks they have just transplanted…
It might not look like the most professional job, but the leeks are safely under the black plastic protected from the really hot sun! And that’s what counts – right!?!
There are rows and rows of veggies to weed, thin and pick!
PB working hard…
Freshly picked chillies 🙂
CC is happy that there are so many chillies to pick as that means spicy chilli oil for lunch and dinner 🙂
CC shows off a small fence that her and PB have built around the peas to protect them and help them stand up…

We got to try our hand at jam making too… I’m not sure how good we were at it… we never got to try the finished product – only make it, put it in jars, and have a small spoonful of jam (which was delicious) from the left-overs in the pan that wouldn’t quite fit in the jars (my excuse and I’m sticking to it! 😉 ) The real test is how well the jars sealed…if they didn’t seal then the jam goes bad… hopefully the next volunteers/guests got to enjoy it… and we didn’t poison anyone!?!

YUM!!! Orange and Mandarin jam…

We also had a morning of trail walking 🙂 Yes, I know you’re questioning if that’s really work… but hey it was the task we were given so we weren’t complaining!! The task was to walk the trail to El Suizo and check that all the signs were in place so no-one could get lost while walking the trail… So off we went…

Here is Aldea Luna’s trail map… we only got to walk one trail as part of our ‘work’…
Yay, this sign is there… no-one’s stolen it!
The workers need a rest!
But only a short one – there’s walking to be done!
We’re on our way back… and all the signs are currently in place 🙂
Check out the view 🙂
CC’s never been smaller than an ant hill before!

There was also general helping out to be done around meal times… setting the table, clearing the table, washing up, sweeping the floors… PB seemed to do a lot of washing up… I always ended up sweeping the floors!?!

PB washing up… his default task as no-one else seemed to like doing it…

‘Volunteering’ at Aldea Luna was okay 🙂 The tasks weren’t too hard even for old folk like us, and we learnt a thing or two 🙂 🙂

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