Scout’s Central America trip enriching
Not many 15-year-olds can say they spent the summer before their freshman year of high school scuba diving in bioluminescent ocean waters, helping sea turtles or learning about a new culture first-hand.
But Regan Crappell can.
The incoming Hendrickson High School freshman traveled by herself to Central America and met with a group of Girl Scouts to spend 14 days in Costa Rica and Panama at the end of June.
The Girl Scouts of the United States of America and Outward Bound Costa Rica facilitated the trip.
Regan was one of six scouts chosen out of applicants from across the country to take the Central American trip. She spent months before the trip raising more than $2,400 by selling concessions at University of Texas baseball games and Girl Scout cookies to fund her adventure.
“(The best part was) staying on the island with the indigenous people and getting to experience a new culture and see things I’ve never really seen before, and getting to see a different part of the world,” she said.
During the trip, Regan lived with a local family and experienced their way of life.
“It was really cool spending time with the family and seeing how different their house was,” she said. “They had several families living in one home and it was very amazing to spend time with the families.”
Although Regan does not speak Spanish, she said she was able to communicate with her host family with gestures and through the help of Outward Bound instructors acting as translators.
In Panama, Regan worked with local biologists to aid in conservation efforts of endangered sea turtles. She helped build habitats, catalog nests, measure, weigh and release hatchlings, and perform night patrols to protect turtles as they lay eggs.
Regan recalled one night when her group walked down the beach with flashlights looking for sea turtles. When they found the turtles, she said, they shut off their lights and watched them by the light of the moon.
She also explored the archipelago of Bocas del Toro and its bioluminescent waters while earning an advanced scuba-diving certification. The adventurers dove 15 feet down with flashlights, then turned them off.
“When you moved, the water would light up all green and glowing,” she said.
Because Regan is a certified scuba diver, she was able to earn her advanced certification in Panama after completing a boat dive, a night dive and a deep dive going down about 100 feet, she said.
The soon-to-be freshman said she has grown from her summer experience in a new land.
“Just to know that everybody has a different story and you can experience different cultures and no two places are alike,” she said of her adventure takeaways.
And the traveling Girl Scout, who went to Ireland and London on a scouting trip last summer, has plans to keep exploring with a trip to the Galapagos Islands and Jamaica with her fellow scouts next summer.