The journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step. Patagonia is much further from my home than 1,000 miles. From the San Francisco Bay Area, it requires two days of travel to reach this iconic hiking destination and my personal journey there was complicated by much more than distance. For many years, I thought…
![A [Volunteer] Day in the Life](https://conservationvip.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/yosemite-960x339-1-300x106.jpg)
It was September, 2009. My wife and I learned about ConservationVIP® from a family member and we were encouraged to check out the trip to Yosemite National Park. Upon learning more details from the ConservationVIP® website and through REI Adventures, we signed up to join them. Having experienced the value of volunteering locally and being…
Some things just “say” Galapagos. The blue-footed booby. Marine iguana. Tortoise. Darwin. I’d heard the words before, but now I was about to live them. Here I was, shoe-horned into a small plane approaching Isla Isabela, the outermost inhabited island in the Galapagos, with about a dozen Conservation Volunteers International Program (ConservationVIP®) volunteers. I couldn’t…
Have you ever been camping or hiking and thought – darn, I really should have brought those extra socks, or maybe a hat, or maybe a blanket; perhaps, you needed a rope for your tent or someone to chase away a raccoon in the night. Or, you may have even found yourself as the last…
Peter Murphy, photographer and videographer extraordinaire, has generously shared his talents with ConservationVIP®, producing videos and photographs which vividly portray our volunteer trips. Because Peru and Machu Picchu hold special meaning to Peter, his first videos for us were focused on our Machu Picchu volunteer trip. I asked Peter to explain why he has been…
