Izi joined the gap year and life team last month and helping gappers and families organise their trips for 2012/2013. She comes with a great camps history having stayed for 3 months in Camp Kenya in 2005 so has a lot of insider knowledge. Great pic here the one with only one eye is Izi!

My Name is Izi Dragonetti

The best thing about working for Camps is the welcoming and relaxed atmosphere that greets you everyday, oh, and also being a part of something worthwhile!

Ideally I’d like for Camps to send me to all of our destinations. Then I will truly be able to speak with authority about the projects we run and the uniqueness of each destination. But if I had to pick…Borneo or Cambodia!

I think probably the best and most memorable place I have been is Kerala, India and in particular the backwaters of Cochin.

I think my favorite  camps project is probably Camp Kenya, simply because I have been a gapper there in the past, and I feel quite protective of the project work I was involved in.

My best advice for someone considering taking a gap year would be to JFDI. Also go on your own and travel light! follow the gap team on twitter @campsgapyear

What do you do if you have three hours to kill in a tiny airport, it is 32°c and the only thing in the airport – a very small café – is closed?  You write a blog.

I am on my way back from a great weekend on the coast.  I came down here to see the guys who are leaving on Thursday – they are the core of our first group and they are coming to the end of their three months.  Somewhat like their arrival, this feels like a really big event: a big mark in the life of Camp Ecuador.

The Equator monument near Camp Maqui

Camp Costa looks great and the weather has been fabulous.  Today some of the group were diving and the rest were visiting Isla de la Plata.  Project work is done and holiday time is here, and there could hardly be a better place for a few days chilling out.

The group have, since arriving; cared for abandoned animals; built an organic vegetable garden, which will feed the kids at Santa Marianita school for years to come; maintained paths in the cloud forest, to help in the conservation of the spectacled bear; painted the tables at Camp Maqui to leave their mark; built a river beach for yellow-spotted turtle nesting; helped in the construction of a community tourism scheme; ridden a llama; taught English; learnt Spanish; built octopus houses out of recycled materials; visited the Andes, the Amazon and the coast (and some of them fitted in the Galapagos as well); spent lots of money in Otavalo; stood on the equator; been tubing and ziplining; seen butterflies hatch and chocolate being made; visited Quito old town, the best preserved of the early colonial cities in Latin America; spent time in indigenous communities; walked to 4800 meters on one of the world’s highest active volcanoes; travelled many miles by road, air and both river and ocean going boat; laughed and cried and probably argued, but I don’t know about the last one: not a bad way to spend a few months away from the drought in the UK.

Working at the aquarium while at Camp Costa

A permanent reminder of the first group at Camp Maqui

Pre ascent to Refuge on Cotopaxi at 4800 meters, and subsequent descent by mountainbike.

They are now going on to various universities and careers and we wish them well.  It has been a great pleasure having them here and maybe one day they’ll come back and see us.  For us it is time to push on, to build on the good work that the first group has been so important in helping establish and make sure we do this great country justice for those who follow.

If you go to Otavalo market on a weekday it is impressive.  You think about the fact that you have been told it is the largest arts and crafts market in South America and you come away satisfied. Then you go on a Saturday.  The noise, the colour, the crush, the sheer overwhelming abundance of life is senses shattering.  I would guess that it is eight or ten times the size of its weekday self.  I have changed the schedules of all our trips: Otavalo on a Saturday, put it in your list of things to do before you die.

The Amazon basin is vast, truly eye bogglingly vast.  There is a pull-in on the road from Papallacta down into the “Oriente”, as it is called in Ecuador, from which you can look out east across miles upon miles of green.  It is the sort of view in which you have to think in terms of the curve of the earth rather than simply the horizon.  It inspires you to think about the few “lost tribes” who get on with their lives out there without broadband, Coca-Cola and, for the most part, metal and the wheel.  Globally significant and hard to take in.

There are quite a few live volcanoes in Ecuador: Tungurahua erupted in 2010.  These mountains form, in most cases, perfect cones, like children’s drawings of mountains.  Many are snow capped.  Tungurahua still smokes occasionally.  You can climb Cotapaxi, but when you are on it you may want to remember that this mountain, in 1877 – about 3 seconds ago in geological time – managed to spew lahars (mudflows) during one of its eruptions as far as the Pacific coast, which is about 100kms away.    In Ecuador the ground itself is animate.

Machalilla National Park on the Ecuador coast, and site of Camp Ecuador’s Costa Camp, has been described as the love shack of the humpback whale.  No one knows for certain why they breach –  show of strength, mating ritual, extreme breathing technique, getting rid of parasites are all considered possible – but when they do you can see the splash from many miles away.  And, particularly in June/July/August, you are likely to be much, much closer than that: it is hard to avoid the clichés of ‘majestic’ , ‘powerful’  (‘awesome’ if you are an American) except to say it is sort of dribblingly staggering and life affirming

One for the boys:  Dolores, who cleans our house, calls me “Don Damian”.  Come on now, admit it, “Don”: you understand.

Damian Scott-Mason Director Camp Ecuador