Barva’s Trip to Barva

By Anna Hennig and Kyra Woodman

This month Senior 4 Students Kyra Woodman and Anna Hennig went on a trip to Barva volcano, along with their fellow Barva House members from that year level. They encountered torrential rain, knee-deep mud and slippery uphill and downhill trails. Here is their account of the trip.

After sitting in the bus for 45 minutes, we arrived outside a small restaurant, where we began our walk to the camp site. The walk up was tiring, with the road being steep, uphill and windy. We walked for what felt like forever, but finally made it to the campsite after a couple hours, barely missing the rain that was coming. We then started putting up our tents (with Miss Ryan’s help, as none of us had any idea what we were doing) and started eating lunch.


We had a couple hours before heading out on our next walk, so we decided to play Frisbee. As we didn’t actually have a Frisbee to play with, we ended up using a plastic plate, which we nearly lost in the bushes several times. We later found out (as we were packing up) that Miss Ryan had actually brought a ball with her, but we hadn’t thought of asking.

We set of on our second walk of the day in the early afternoon to go see the Barva Lake. The walk was nice, but again mostly up hill, which tired us out. When we finally got to the lake, it was cloudy and we couldn’t see much, but it was still beautiful. We were then told by Mr Posterino that we would get extra points for Barva for every person who went to the Lake Copet, and all decided to go, even though it meant an extra hour and a half of walking.

We were walking on a little dirt path in the middle of the forest. It started off ok, but then it started pouring with rain, drenching some people who hadn’t brought anything waterproof, and the path got very wet and muddy. The ground went from being solid too mushy, and several people sunk almost knee deep in mud!

We continued walking, determined to get those merits, but after walking forever in the rain, and not being able to see the lake, we turned around and started back up the muddy path. When we got back to the camp a couple hours later, we were wet, cold, dirty, and tired, and any of us who had had white shoes when we started off didn’t anymore.

What we really wanted was a nice hot shower, but as the showers were as cold as ice, we skipped it and change into our PJs to warm up, then went to our tents, which we found out had let water in through the cracks in the bottom. Lucky for the people in the middle, their sleeping bags weren’t wet, but the ones on the sides were damp. We ate our supper in our tents and talked a bit.

We were so exhausted though that some of us actually fell asleep at around 7:30. We had been told that it was freezing at night, but we didn’t find it too cold, it was more refreshing. We were also nice and warm in our tent since we were all packed together, leaving us hardly any room to even breathe.

It rained all night, and the next morning we woke up early, soaking wet and lying in puddles. We got out of our tents quickly and put on some dry clothing, then went to make breakfast. Mr Posterino was already up barbecuing delicious sausages for us though, which we ate skewered on sticks. We then started packing up our stuff and taking down our tents (which took forever) before heading out in our wet shoes from the day before. We had thought it would be a road going down, but we actually walked on paths that were more like muddy slides. Almost everyone fell at least five times (we were counting), and there were only a couple who didn’t fall at all.

We were on the path in the forest for just over an hour when the slippery muddy slides broke off onto a dirt road. Some of us then took our shoes off and ran down it, which was a lot of fun. The last bit of our walk was on a paved road, which was extremely steep downhill. Most of our group had stuck with Mr Posterino not wanting to get lost, but some of the guys went off ahead, and they were already at the bus stop when we arrived, claiming to have been there for an hour already. The last bit of our trip was going to McDonald’s, where we got lots of stares, as we were covered in mud and limping.

All in all, our trip to Barva was lots of fun, but very muddy and tiring. We also learnt a lot of things; like don’t wear white shoes when you’re going hiking, check to make sure the ground is actually solid before you step on it, especially if it’s been raining, make sure you’re the one sleeping in the middle in the tent, make sure you bring a rain coat; and that Frisbees work better than plates. We also learnt how to put up a tent from Mrs Ryan, and Mr Ryan taught us how to use a gas stove. The most fun thing about Barva was the walk down the slippery slides of mud on the second day, trying not to fall, and sharing and laughing about it with friends.