From: EDP24
He endured four months of sub-zero temperatures on an expedition across Greenland last year but now young Norfolk adventurer George Bullard has packed away the sledges and thermals for a new trip in a very different climate - the Amazon rainforest.
The 20-year-old from Gressenhall, near Dereham, has been chosen by the British Schools Exploratory Service to act as a team leader on a month-long expedition into the Pacaya-Samiria National Reserve in Peru.
There he will help guide a group of 16 to 20-year-olds through the country's largest protected area of tropical rainforest, investigating the biodiversity of the reserve's 2,000 square kilometres and carrying out scientific research as well as giving the young explorers what could be their first taste of adventure away from home comforts and their families.
They will be collaborating with experienced Peruvian fieldworkers on projects that will determine the abundance and behaviour of rare, threatened and endangered species within the reserve. This data will be used in developing and modifying the reserve's management practices.
George is now en route to Houston in the USA before going on to Lima in Peru and then on to the remote jungle outpost of Iquitos before travelling deep into the Amazon rainforest for three days by boat.
While he admits to knowing very little about the region, he said his strengths lie in expedition experience and the ability to make good judgments.
“This is a completely different expedition to anything I have been on before and I have no qualifications but you can't put a price on experience,” he said. “It will be a sharp learning curve for me as well but I am really looking forward to it.
“It will be a very different climate - I am fully prepared for the heat and it is nearly 100pc humidity which will take some acclimatising to.
“There are no maps of the region, so one of the things I will be doing is giving the kids some satellite pictures and ask them to work out how to get to a particular place and how long it will take. I will be making some final calls but most of the decisions the kids make themselves. It might be quite a daunting experience for some but rarely would you find anyone who does not like it and wants to go home. And we would only take someone out for a medical emergency. It is the experience of a lifetime.”
He has watched some Bruce Parry films on the region and done as much research as possible and at least his kit bag will be a bit lighter than the 240kgs he had to drag across the polar icecaps. “I'll take plenty of pairs of socks,” he said.
George's thirst for adventure does not stop here. He heads back to Edinburgh University in the autumn where he is reading biological science and management (with a little bit of Russian), and then after Christmas is off to the other side of the world for the Rickshaw Run, a madcap race in a tuk-tuk from northern India to the south.
“I don't really do any training for these things,” said George. “We just never really sit still. My brother and sister are equally mental.”