I had long wanted to hike in Patagonia. But it was a long way from the San Francisco Bay Area, it required 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 that the San Francisco Bay Area…
![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. Darwin. The blue-footed booby. Marine iguana. Tortoise. Darwin’s finches. I’d heard the words before, but now I was about to see them. Here I was, shoe-horned into a small plane approaching Isla Isabela, the outermost inhabited island on the Galapagos Volunteer Trip, with about a dozen Conservation Volunteers International Program…
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…