Rustic Pathways | High School Summer Programs

I was part of the Costa Rica Leadership program and there was nothing more heart felt from the realationships you make with not only the young Tico students, but also with your teammates, and leaders. Going into this program I didn't make my plane. Rustic Pathways was very accommodating and helped me through the process of getting to Costa Rica. When I finally arrived they treated me to a wonderful day at a beautiful waterfall while my team was white water rafting. During the first week we started to build a strong team relationships. We went through a process of how to work with others and discussed what culture means to us. We planned the camp for the Tico students. This trip also included many unforgettable adventures.

I did children's home and elephant sanctuary this summer and miss it so much! I loved my group everyone was so fun and we all just became best friends, wich is what made the trip so amazing. The itinerary and actual activities were really cool and the days were jam packed, wich is good, but they left no free time to do things like shower, hang out, or journal. There was a lot of travelling, it took 52 hours of travelling to get there and during the trip, there would often be long car rides 1-6 hours. Becuase of this I felt like the trip was far shorter than what we paid for. The counsellors were not the best, I liked one of them, but the rest were all negative and not fun. Rustic did do a great job of teaching and showing the true culture of all areas of Thailand that we were in. Also, the service was pretty rewarding, we did 2 days of teaching and 2 days of construction at a school. I would definitely recommend and I will be going on another trip next year. Also if you're not so outgoing I recommend going with a friend.

This trip showed the variety of all the different countries in culture, food, experiences, and wildlife. The experiences that I got on this trip were once in a lifetime. Going to Peru, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba in 3 weeks was hectic but worth it 100%.

I had an amazing time on this trip. Although the accomadations were a little tough, lots of bugs and animals, and wifi broke down, I got to know the culture and people on my trip better and I also learned a lot of spanish. The service work load was a lot, yet it was very rewarding and I am pleased with my groups' work. I wish the program told us before had that the work load was a lot of manual labor, yet I had the best time and made so many new friendships.

I had a great time on my trip in Costa Rica. It was 9 days and we did a lot of physical labor for 2 hours in the morning and afternoon along with night walks on the beach to search for turtles. Although I don't take Spanish, I was able to communicate with basic greetings with the locals. I had wish that the program emphasized the amount of effort the night walks were because they were for about 3 hours each night and were exhausting. Also, we had a lot of free time which would have been better to do more group activities than we did. Overall, my trip was amazing and I made a bunch of great new friends

I had an incredible experience. The food was amazing and the memories will last forever. The service was great although sometimes not what I had expected. The accommodations were sometimes faulty (leaking AC or lack of water in the bathroom), but that didn't impact my experience all that much overall.