Transcript
Speaker: Hi, I'm Trent Maxwell.
Speaker: And I'm Lee Mason.
Speaker: And we want to welcome you to our Live, Learn, Survive podcast.
Speaker: Since 2018, Lee and I travel the globe and met face-to-face with over 26,000 children in six countries across three continents.
Speaker: We created a series of award-winning children's books, Max's Rescue Squad, and are now founders of our Live, Learn, Survive charity.
Speaker: All focused on teaching teens and young adults' life skills and not only help themselves, but help others too.
Speaker: We take what we do very seriously ourselves, not so much as you assume we're here.
Speaker: So let's spend the next half an hour together with some fun, inspiration and kindness, and we'll try and learn something too.
Speaker: How are you this week, Lee?
Speaker: Maxie, I am good because, um, as you kind of know, we're still, we're still on holiday, but we're at the moment, we're not yet on holiday and, um, we've got another special guest.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I'm very excited to speak.
Speaker: I'm so excited today.
Speaker: So they, they reached out a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker: you know, on the other side of the world.
Speaker: The power of social media.
Speaker: Very similar to what I do as a lifeguard here in Sydney.
Speaker: And I can't wait to hear their story and what they're doing in Costa Rica.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: So using social media for good, these friendships develop.
Speaker: So today we are joined by the Santa Teresa lifeguards from Costa Rica.
Speaker: So we have Thomas Ritchie, who is the founder of the Santa Teresa lifeguards.
Speaker: He's a surfer, a waterman, and a pillar of the community, I hear.
Speaker: And also we've been joined by his daughter, Avalon, who is one of the volunteer lifeguards for the Santa Teresa lifeguards.
Speaker: They founded the lifeguards in 2014, established after three tragic drowning events.
Speaker: And what we want to do today is showcase lifeguard in their part of the world.
Speaker: So welcome, Thomas and Avalon.
Speaker: Welcome, guys.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Nice introduction.
Speaker: We're happy to be here.
Speaker: Oh, we are thrilled to have you.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: So I'll start off.
Speaker: We're going to ask you a few questions.
Speaker: So the first thing for anybody that doesn't know your beautiful part of the world, tell us about Santa Teresa and Costa Rica.
Speaker: Well, we are located on the Nakoya Peninsula.
Speaker: It's in the middle of the country.
Speaker: You can take a ferry here or a long drive about six hours out of the capital.
Speaker: And we're a new town, only really about 20 years old as a destination.
Speaker: We've been living here for 33 years.
Speaker: The first five years without electricity.
Speaker: So it was very quiet, just a few people.
Speaker: And it got going around 2000.
Speaker: and the numbers started to increase and it's a very beautiful land and surf area and very tropical.
Speaker: And we're based in beside the Cabo Blanco reserve.
Speaker: And most people come here for surf and yoga and a lot of partying.
Speaker: It's a lot of young people.
Speaker: It's kind of weird dynamic.
Speaker: It's yeah, it's just there's a night crowd and a day crowd and
Speaker: So a lot of, uh, drugs and alcohol and, uh, you know, a lot of, uh, you know, uh, uneducated people, uh, for a surfing and a lot of currents and, um, a lot of geographical, you know, so many beaches that are unprotected, no education in, uh, the surfing, you know, you know, the schools.
Speaker: So we're at the brunt of that down here in this beautiful paradise and, uh,
Speaker: It's we're just trying to educate too and let everybody know what's going on.
Speaker: You can see how, when you said all those different factors to how you do your lifeguarding, there's so many things going on.
Speaker: So I could feel Maxie's shoulders tense in every bit of that conversation of like, whoa, exactly.
Speaker: Sorry about that.
Speaker: It's a risky disaster.
Speaker: And it's amazing that you guys started in 2014 to make the place better, more safer.
Speaker: So a really big pat on the back to you guys.
Speaker: That leads us into the next question.
Speaker: Tell us about your lifeguard service.
Speaker: Just your service.
Speaker: Tell us, you know, your team, what you guys do for training.
Speaker: So almost nine years old.
Speaker: So 10 year anniversary next year.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: How do you recruit?
Speaker: So we run solely on volunteer lifeguards all year round.
Speaker: We have about three, three lifeguards, myself included that live here full time year round.
Speaker: And most, yeah, most of us are volunteers from all over the world.
Speaker: We,
Speaker: People can come here.
Speaker: Obviously they have to be certified lifeguards and they come here for a shortage of a minimum of two weeks, six weeks, four weeks, four weeks to three months.
Speaker: And they live in our lifeguard house and our headquarters.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We fit 17 and yeah.
Speaker: And basically all they have to do is it's an exchange.
Speaker: They work one shift six days a week.
Speaker: So they get one free day and the shifts are only five hours.
Speaker: We open our towers from 8.15 to 6.15 every day.
Speaker: Five towers.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So five towers every day, 365 days a year.
Speaker: And for someone that's listening that is potentially got the qualifications and they want to get in touch, they'll see how to get in touch with you guys.
Speaker: But is it as easy as sending an email or reaching out?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, you send an email to our...
Speaker: the main lifeguard organization email, santeresalifeguards at Gmail, I think it is.
Speaker: And yeah, basically you send your swim times and they look over your application and then, yeah.
Speaker: You basically were looking for lifeguards with ocean experience.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: He looks for surfers.
Speaker: He wants surfers.
Speaker: Well, you know what?
Speaker: Down at Bondi, we work with the surf clubs, the volunteers, but we also admire and look for lifeguards.
Speaker: Sorry, surfers.
Speaker: They're out and surf every day.
Speaker: We get a lot of the grassroots of young surfers.
Speaker: people that have grown up on the beach to join the lifeguards, not necessarily having a life-saving background.
Speaker: But yeah, I could see what Thomas was saying.
Speaker: It's always good to get some surfers because they're... Waterman skills.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And a lot of the time when tragedies do happen, and as you'd probably both know, being surfers, is sometimes the lifeguards will be in the towers or they'll be doing their patrols.
Speaker: There'll be a medical episode or something will kick off out and surf.
Speaker: A lot of the time the surfers are potentially first on scene.
Speaker: There's numerous amount of programs where we're trying to educate surfers as well, not just the, um, the people around the waterways, but the surfers to be fast and quick first responders as well.
Speaker: So it's awesome.
Speaker: I have a, one nice thing to say about Australia for you guys.
Speaker: We want to thank Australia.
Speaker: And I think it was, uh, Mike or Mark Banting.
Speaker: one of the pro servers who started 24 seven.
Speaker: That's what I was gonna say, 24 seven.
Speaker: Yeah, well we copied that program.
Speaker: And we've made it into like sometimes a two and three day courses.
Speaker: And we've taught over 150 surfers randomly over the last nine years.
Speaker: We give them a rash guard.
Speaker: It's called, you know, a guard to surf, surf guard.
Speaker: And they learn the whole 24-7 program plus a little bit more CPR, a little bit more.
Speaker: We've extended a little bit.
Speaker: It's still, we offer it as a free course.
Speaker: You get a rash guard at the end.
Speaker: And we really believe here that the more surfers and local surfers that we can get that are strong watermen, are water women to learn that water safety, to put your board first and let the people grab the board so they don't drown you and defuse the people.
Speaker: And one of the things we ask, one of our more, from a lesson that we learned is we try to get every lifeguard to ask how many people in your party
Speaker: Who is with you?
Speaker: Is there any other people there?
Speaker: One question that people seem to not remember in the time of a rescue, they concentrate on the people and they didn't know that there was just somebody who drifted off just very close.
Speaker: And how we started was from a big rescue that happened where a group of like seven drifted out at sunset around some rocks and about six guys went out with boards and went around the corner, grabbed them,
Speaker: all came back in and in the whole commotion didn't realize there was seven and they only rescued six and the other one was there wow yeah situational awareness is very important you need to know your surroundings you need to know how many people how many people are in the party and so on but the the skills that uh surfers can learn yeah can be life-saving
Speaker: And the technique of the paddling with your feet up and getting the patient to lie on, you know, or the victim to lie on your back with their head on their butt is like,
Speaker: Ingenious when I learned that from that, you know, that course, I was like, wow, that's a game changer for dragging people, you know, in.
Speaker: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker: And then using the currents and the surf to your advantage to be able to get that person in as quickly and as safely as possible as well without losing them.
Speaker: So you can do the leg tuck, like you're saying.
Speaker: And yeah, it's called the leg tuck.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Another thing I wanted to touch on was just recently within two months ago, we had a body surfer, an older gentleman,
Speaker: you know, body serving by himself in a little lone stretch of the beach with a pretty solid shore pound and must have tucked into some kind of barrel and bam, slammed the bottom, hit his head, knocked himself unconscious, gave him a big strawberry.
Speaker: And with, you know, people were walking by, we had reports of them watching him and,
Speaker: And, uh, before tower hours, the four towers.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Early in early six, seven in the morning or whatever.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It was great.
Speaker: We, the reason we got there was because we had the 7.00 AM training on Tuesdays and Fridays.
Speaker: We have a physical training that's mandatory.
Speaker: And it's basically we practice rescue techniques and we work on cardio and running, swimming, entering classic lifeguard workouts.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So they were there and got to the victim, but it was a little bit too late.
Speaker: So I just say, well, again, what our rule, what we were trying to,
Speaker: learn from this lesson is you know the buddy system and if you would have been with a friend or somebody else or somebody you know the chances of survival is so much more yeah so we you know tried to turn it around in a positive way and that's how our lifeguard association got formed was a double drowning uh in 2014 with a two-year-old baby and a lady the baby walked off into the water she found she's seen it she came up and grabbed the baby by the time she had the baby she was in
Speaker: up to her waist and just couldn't walk out and just kind of floating out.
Speaker: It was very small waves, very dead low tide, a little bit of current sucking out.
Speaker: And before you knew it, she was floating and trying to hold the baby and, uh, very shortly drowned.
Speaker: And, uh, that affected our community so much that, um,
Speaker: It brought everybody together, you know, and also there was a thing that happened about a year before that, the Costa Rican government realized that they needed to make all lifeguard or all surf instructors take a basic CPR lifeguarding course.
Speaker: So it just so happened about a dozen of our local guys had gone down to Hakko to another beach community, taken a five-day course with Marvin, this local guy, and had been certified over this last year.
Speaker: Just with CPR skills.
Speaker: Just with CPR.
Speaker: Very basic, like a very crude lifeguard.
Speaker: They all thought they were lifeguards, these guys, you know, like when they came back.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It was like a 24-7 course, you know, a little extended kind of work.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And anyway, so they all stepped right up.
Speaker: Like, they're like, hey, let's get together.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: We want to help.
Speaker: So we raised $16,000 from the community.
Speaker: We had enough to pay, come up with $2,000 a month, you know, and we've had some other donations.
Speaker: But it was just to pay the lifeguards on Saturdays and Sundays.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: $500, you know, 250 Saturday, 250 Sunday, five guys, five different towers.
Speaker: They donated some time too, but that was the beginning of it.
Speaker: That was the beginning of it.
Speaker: So it was to start off as a paid program.
Speaker: And we realized, you know, even when people donated, they would say, Hey, we donate the money for your lifeguards.
Speaker: And then we don't see them all week.
Speaker: And I'm like, well, we're, don't have enough funds to keep the lifeguards on the top seven days a week.
Speaker: So that's when we knew then that we were gonna have to go to some kind of other solution.
Speaker: And as the years went on, it just turned out that a piece of property came up in front of my property that had a building existing from like a youth hostel.
Speaker: And Matias, my Argentinian friend, who was also more of the push, who's a real certified lifeguard from us, Marta Plata in Argentina, he had been monitoring the beaches for a few years in 2010, say to 2014.
Speaker: with two or three friends, you know, with the fans just walking because our numbers were growing so much and we were having these drownings, you know, a couple here, a couple there, you know, like numbers were growing, drownings were growing.
Speaker: It was like, it was starting to be an issue.
Speaker: Costa Rica had more drownings than the U.S. Wow, that's scary.
Speaker: Just to get you on a little bit of our statistics, you know, I had no idea when I got into it.
Speaker: Matias approached me
Speaker: to build, uh, some towers, some sort of tower out of some bamboo that I grow for this coming up some on a Santa, you know, Easter, Holy week kind of thing where the numbers of the people just come down and, and they like to drink and they like the party.
Speaker: They like to fish off the rocks, you know, and they get off the rocks, you know, a lot of drunken fishermen.
Speaker: It's all, there were always, these people were drowning and, um,
Speaker: So they came to me and I said, yeah, I can make you some towers.
Speaker: You know, how many towers do you need?
Speaker: And he goes, we only need three because two for Santa Teresa, one for Carmen.
Speaker: And I said to him,
Speaker: What about Playa Hermosa or another beach a little farther up the coast?
Speaker: And it's very popular, but there's a gap of long, flat coastline that there's no real people.
Speaker: And so it's a separated zone kind of thing.
Speaker: And he goes, listen, we don't have the manpower.
Speaker: We only got like five or six guys.
Speaker: We're going to work these three towers.
Speaker: We got it figured out.
Speaker: And I made a joke.
Speaker: I said, you know, we don't care about the people in Hermosa kind of thing.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You know, and he goes, just we don't have the manpower.
Speaker: It's just not possible.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm like, OK, I'll make you three towers.
Speaker: And I didn't think anything about it.
Speaker: About three days later, that's when the double drowning happened in Hermosa.
Speaker: And I was like, oh, my God, like we're making another tower first off.
Speaker: And we've got to do something.
Speaker: And then everybody just met at our place.
Speaker: The association just basically formed like with so much passion, a retired lifeguard named John.
Speaker: from Florida came and was living here and he came down and hung out and kind of guided everybody and helped and his wife.
Speaker: And then we're like, yeah, let's make this association.
Speaker: Let's get the domain name.
Speaker: Let's start it.
Speaker: We printed shirts, we made stickers.
Speaker: We kind of got the energy, a lot of fundraisers, a lot of pizza parties, a lot of, you know, events and bike races and competitions and different things.
Speaker: Isn't it incredible like the power of community when everyone comes together and what can be achieved?
Speaker: And the passion as well.
Speaker: I can see how much passion you guys have and it's very admiring to see.
Speaker: You know, sometimes through adversity and through tragedies like the Double Drowning Hemosa, the fact that, you know, you guys go, no, I'm building that extra tower, I'm doing these things.
Speaker: We're creating this amazing centuries of lifeguard service, community, and, yeah, hats off to you guys.
Speaker: It's amazing.
Speaker: You just mentioned there, Thomas, statistics.
Speaker: So how many rescues and how many drowners?
Speaker: Give us some of your statistics.
Speaker: Last year we had 1,642 preventions, 108 first aides, 192 rescues and three CPRs.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Did you have any drownings last year?
Speaker: And last year, no, we had zero.
Speaker: We haven't had any drownings until this year.
Speaker: With a lifeguard on duty.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, we've had some below.
Speaker: Eight years straight, we had no drownings.
Speaker: The body surfer drowned from hitting his head.
Speaker: He was unconscious, you know, quickly.
Speaker: That is incredible.
Speaker: Just think of the lives you've saved.
Speaker: Think of the lives of lifeguards.
Speaker: It's amazing.
Speaker: We do all that with a lack, with a shortage of lifeguards.
Speaker: In the rainy season is when we have a shortage.
Speaker: Even though we have less lifeguards, we still manage to not have any deaths.
Speaker: So that's amazing.
Speaker: That's a good point.
Speaker: When she's just mentioned there that the September, August and October are our three hardest months to find volunteers.
Speaker: So that's what we've been trying to reach out to Australia and New Zealand for nine years and get you guys on board.
Speaker: And I know your clubs and your swimming, your life saving, your nipper, everything's so strong.
Speaker: And they love to send people away.
Speaker: You know, like I've been, I spent one trip in New Zealand a long time ago with some, the all black hopefuls and rugby world.
Speaker: And I know how the Kiwis really like the Aussies like their clubs.
Speaker: and they really want to send their crew abroad, you know, and then take in, you know, visitors from abroad.
Speaker: It's always kind of that style that I'd always admired of Australia, you know, and with their surf club fishing, you know, or the swim club.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: They'd be on clubs.
Speaker: Whatever it is, you know, so.
Speaker: uh let me try to get that that gap you know filled and we've had like only one kiwi from taranaki we've had a couple aussies you know uh very few you know it's mostly you know rgs number one percentage and then we have uh chileans and uruguay come in there probably and then some french are filling in a lot in english
Speaker: England and a lot of Americans too.
Speaker: So it's a real mixing pot and it's international.
Speaker: The guys love it.
Speaker: They're always rotating through and they get, they bond together while they're there.
Speaker: They get in shape, they train, they got the use of the gym, they got bikes to ride around.
Speaker: They got surf a hundred meters away.
Speaker: You know, the town's full of a lot of young people, you know, a lot of young girls.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so,
Speaker: everybody's kind of happy, you know, like it's a young party scene a little bit.
Speaker: We have to keep them on your way.
Speaker: Maxie will be on his way.
Speaker: I was just going to say, it's definitely something, I'm just getting my mind thinking now, we do do a lot of traveling with Live and Survive, but I'd love to come and see you guys one day.
Speaker: We will be on the way.
Speaker: To be able to
Speaker: to be able to just see how you guys work in the flesh, just to watch you guys.
Speaker: And then also to share a bit of knowledge from what I do and then learn some stuff from you guys as well.
Speaker: It's not always a one-way street and that's what I always try to educate people.
Speaker: There's certain skills and ways that you do things that we probably don't do in Australia, but probably would work here in Australia.
Speaker: I'd love, yeah, we'll be in touch.
Speaker: We'll be making sure.
Speaker: And I'd love to come over and do a week or so.
Speaker: I have researched the nearest airport, Maxi, just out of interest as I was doing my geography homework.
Speaker: So you just talked on your... I wanted to just talk a little bit about...
Speaker: That Costa Rica gets 150 drownings per year.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And outside of America, more Americans drown in or die in Mexico.
Speaker: And the second country where Americans die is Costa Rica.
Speaker: Costa Rica.
Speaker: So there, you know, there is the American embassy is aware of this and they're trying to put money into this and fight this problem.
Speaker: There's about seven or eight towns, Tamarindo, Limon, Puerto Viejo, Nosara, Jaco, Capos, Manuel Antonio.
Speaker: These beaches are all funded by the government and there is government support, but they get private support too.
Speaker: We're just one of the newer eighth or ninth on the list.
Speaker: of associations where we do not receive funding.
Speaker: We're kind of independent.
Speaker: We kind of like it that way.
Speaker: We do have some high profile people that support us and buy some quads here and there.
Speaker: We have two quads that we run on rescue.
Speaker: We have a hotline number.
Speaker: We're covering, I don't know, about six or seven kilometers.
Speaker: Suns race is two kilometers and then it goes a little bit into Malt Pais.
Speaker: There's another beach.
Speaker: We it's a fair range.
Speaker: We send our guys out on bikes.
Speaker: And so we're, you know, we're always looking for, you know, social media help to help support us on social media.
Speaker: You know, they get our funding in our base up.
Speaker: We're around 7000 followers.
Speaker: We're trying to get it up a little bit to do some GoFundMe and kind of thing, you know, accounts and we're always looking for medical supplies.
Speaker: We're looking for fitness equipment.
Speaker: Yeah, fitness equipment.
Speaker: Everyone has anything.
Speaker: Psychological support.
Speaker: Like we meet psychologists in town and when we have trauma or near death or drowning, you know, kind of victims and stuff like that, we're like, hey, contact this person.
Speaker: Different languages.
Speaker: We need French.
Speaker: English, Spanish, you know, different languages to help our volunteers if there's a problem.
Speaker: You know, we hope we can hook up the number and Skype somebody to decompress them a little bit, you know.
Speaker: Incredible.
Speaker: Also, I just want to talk about one thing before I wrap up.
Speaker: I think the United Nations has recognized that drowning is like the number three cause of unintentional deaths.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Aware of that kind of deal, right?
Speaker: So to me, we were lucky that our model worked where we had the means to purchase this piece of land and renovate it because Matthias was a fitness instructor and had a small booty camp thing going on the beach with a small gym at his house.
Speaker: So we kind of moved the gym over to this building and just extended the roof and made this
Speaker: outdoor jungle gym that's just taken off and that's the how the moneymaker that runs the proceeds to cover our six is what i was going to ask you about next yeah that's how it runs that and it so some months and we're busy and everybody's in and we're pumping we have david hayes world champion boxers we just have the the german uh goalie for the national team the olympic team in the gym right now so we have some high profile but it's we have a lot of down time so it's hard to
Speaker: the association never makes money we're always you know buying more shirts or buying more gear or buying stuff we need to grow yeah and our long-term thing is we only have like one headquarters for santa theresa but there's three beaches there's playa hermosa that needs a headquarters we just had an academy where avalon was uh teaching tell them about the academy
Speaker: Yeah, we held a seven day academy in May.
Speaker: It was the first one and it ran really well.
Speaker: We had some local instructors and also Matias, the co-founder and also some doctors, paramedic EMTs.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: EMTs.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And yeah, it was 16.
Speaker: There were 16 participants.
Speaker: Some of them that live in Hermosa.
Speaker: And so we donated, we gave them, we gifted them a torpedo, a buoy and some fins and they're going to start doing their own.
Speaker: We have a tower we built up there for them.
Speaker: Just like a couple hours a day.
Speaker: They're going to start doing guards there.
Speaker: That's awesome stuff, guys.
Speaker: This is incredible.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Third training we've done in nine years.
Speaker: Haven't done a lot of certification.
Speaker: That leads us to the serious issue of why the United Nations recognizes that drowning is the third leading cause of unintentional death.
Speaker: is I believe that you guys are doing amazing work and your style of information education is a key factor.
Speaker: Early on.
Speaker: Teaching swimming, teaching basic survival instinct, buddy system, learning basic knowledge of ocean safety, land safety, everything, that stuff is awesome.
Speaker: And you're using a first world program in a first world country.
Speaker: But there is second kind of world countries and there's third world countries.
Speaker: And so the current means of how we get certified life instructor life, you know, lifeguard instructors, there's not many of them in this world, but get that certification to teach.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Then you've got to pay them.
Speaker: to come to your place to teach a course.
Speaker: So then you gotta block out a week or two weeks of time and advertise before to the, you know, trying to get people interested in taking this course.
Speaker: They have to stop work for two weeks.
Speaker: They have to come up with the money for the course
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And in second and third world countries, these are huge problems.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Trying to get this together.
Speaker: Hence, that's why we've only had three certification courses in nine years.
Speaker: OK.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So and that's just us.
Speaker: And we're like, you know, we're a second world.
Speaker: We're not first.
Speaker: We're not third.
Speaker: You know, we're in between kind of thing.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: But we recognize this from the South Africans who had the United Nations had a convention in Cape Town a couple of years ago before COVID talking all about the problems and how they were going to address this drowning issue with more education.
Speaker: And I know
Speaker: You guys probably know too that it's kind of a strange thing.
Speaker: Over the last 5-10 years, there was a lot of countries that took out money from swimming and education in a lot of different countries around the world.
Speaker: And it was restricted.
Speaker: And then they learned as drowning got more, you know, numbers went up that they're like, now they're on the back burner and the money's kind of coming back and the awareness is coming.
Speaker: You know, like I heard even like a year or two ago that Germany had for the first time ever more kids that didn't know how to swim ever before in the history of Germany.
Speaker: I hear this random stuff.
Speaker: So I'm saying to me, it's like we need to change the model, right, of how we go about this, saving the lives, right?
Speaker: And so the only thing we can think of is something that just happened naturally for us is that we went from a jungle and we still are very grassroots, very jungle run.
Speaker: You know, we just do everything we can to stay alive and keep people on the towers.
Speaker: We have...
Speaker: you know, jealousy of our, of our locals who don't like the idea of foreigners working the towers and their beach town, you know, they're a little bit macho with that whole thing.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So we're, we're always being political and dealing with that and keeping that image strong.
Speaker: But like, for instance, in Nicaragua, there's a lady up there at the beach and a little town where there was been some drownings a lot on her beach.
Speaker: And she's like,
Speaker: maybe willing to put a little space where we can make a small bodega, make a little roof, put some weights in there, make a makeshift gym on the beach and pick a few of the kids from the community that are water kids, that are surfers, that have interest in health and fitness and get them into the club and say, hey, start working out.
Speaker: Here's the weights.
Speaker: You can work for free, train.
Speaker: get the healthy see the ones that are focused see the ones that are working out okay run them swim them getting all then do some cpr do some courses and then get lifeguards to go around the world to these little areas kind of connect them so you've got a local that's running this little makeshift gym now they need a lifeguard to come in and really get them up to like more code more levels teach more information they don't have to be a teacher they don't have to be certified
Speaker: You know, they know they've taken the courses, they're up to snuff, but now they can help out that person there and say, listen, okay, let's pick a couple.
Speaker: Let's do a course.
Speaker: We're going to do a certification course and it's going to be a jungle certification course.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: It's not going to be international recognized, but at least we're going to have more people in the community that know how to rescue, start that hell.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Start that model and just try to duplicate this on small scales or bigger scales and move it around, you know, and try to spread that thing.
Speaker: And so I think we should be making like a little a documentary about our jungle experience and how we made this jungle gym.
Speaker: And then try to bring it up in Nicaragua and shoot it and make it from grassroots and just go for this project.
Speaker: That's my vision.
Speaker: And maybe inspire other people to do it in different countries or whatever.
Speaker: But somehow the model needs to change.
Speaker: What we're dealing now with, like I said, very few instructors teaching more people how to be lifeguards.
Speaker: If we want to get the numbers up, we've got to just do it a little bit more underground, I think.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: I don't know how you feel.
Speaker: Some of the things that we do, it's like we're not a course, but it's just that little bit of information that might spark curiosity, that might send them on the next, asking the next question a little bit more interest.
Speaker: They may want to be a lifeguard like Maxie.
Speaker: They may want to be just those simple steps that will make a second count on the ground in that moment when something goes wrong.
Speaker: They know exactly what to do.
Speaker: They know what to do.
Speaker: It can change a life.
Speaker: Yeah, I really admire.
Speaker: That would be a really cool idea.
Speaker: You know, I'm sure someone, if you build up the script or how it would look to do that, but that Jungle Rescue would be pretty cool.
Speaker: I reckon that would be awesome to see because it would be inspiring for people all across the world.
Speaker: to go hey i've got this backyard we have a lot of drownings we have these situations um we've got kids or people that are in and out of the surf all the time let's teach them some skills like these guys and yeah so awesome so with with your gym now do people so i'm curious to know how you we you know like with the funding and like you all your lifeguards are volunteers so do people pay to use the gym and then that helps
Speaker: You know, keep the lights on and if you've got people coming in from, you know, other areas and things like that.
Speaker: Is that how it works?
Speaker: Yeah, we, tell them what the restaurant programs are.
Speaker: You should tell them about it.
Speaker: You like the food.
Speaker: We love food.
Speaker: Tell us about the restaurant.
Speaker: It's the best part.
Speaker: It's all the donated meals.
Speaker: She works for bananas, we say.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: We made a deal with a lot of the restaurants.
Speaker: Yeah, basically, so we have a lady, Dina, who comes and cleans and cooks for the house, for the lifeguard house.
Speaker: She's from Nicaragua.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: Yeah, and so she cooks a meal five days a week, Monday to Friday.
Speaker: Breakfast and lunch?
Speaker: No, just lunch.
Speaker: Just lunch.
Speaker: And then on the weekends, we have restaurants around the town.
Speaker: They donate two or three meals, free meals for our lifeguards.
Speaker: And it's a really nice program.
Speaker: It's an easy way that they can support us financially because economically, it's really expensive to have businesses here.
Speaker: But yeah, they don't have enough money to donate monthly to our program.
Speaker: So instead they just give like a meal or two.
Speaker: So the life gods will come in to volunteer.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We have one place that donates four meals, but most of them are two.
Speaker: We have different meals for Saturday.
Speaker: But there's like 10 restaurants, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, there's a lot of restaurants.
Speaker: So they're always constantly going for dinner here, dinner there.
Speaker: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker: So the lifeguards come and work their time volunteering, but now they've got somewhere to stay and the town will look after them for food and things like that.
Speaker: So it's an amazing experience.
Speaker: They come up with their breakfast money.
Speaker: and yeah they they have some uh like uh commodities in the house they have like free coffee tea um oats some free fruit and then yeah basically they get free accommodation one free meal a day and they have a free gym so it's really nice for the community to like work out side by side with guards you can meet lifeguards what an opportunity for a young lifeguard traveling
Speaker: Yeah, it's really nice for them.
Speaker: And then they surf all morning and then they just have to work half of the day.
Speaker: Yeah, these groups, guys, we had a group of two or three that came from the Baltic area.
Speaker: From Poland.
Speaker: Yeah, Baltic Rescue.
Speaker: Yes, we know Rob and the crew at Baltic Rescue.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: We know Rob.
Speaker: We've done some stuff with Rob.
Speaker: We've done some stuff with Rob in the past.
Speaker: He's part of our online program that we started, which we're in the process of making it bigger and better.
Speaker: But, yeah, we met Rob through our online program.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And he's a champion.
Speaker: He does stuff up at Myrtle Beach as well, up in North or South Carolina.
Speaker: One of the Carolinas.
Speaker: I'm not sure which one it is.
Speaker: But I've...
Speaker: After this chat, I'm going to go through and I'm going to Google map that whole area you're talking about, the beaches.
Speaker: I'm just going to like visualize just to get my head around.
Speaker: But yeah, Rob, I vaguely remember Rob going down to you guys.
Speaker: So I'll check it out.
Speaker: I'm interested in your educational program, teaching the kids about ocean safety and ocean blindness.
Speaker: If we could get any of that stuff, we could translate it to Spanish, you know?
Speaker: Yes, we have just had... It's like the Cuban Spanish, you know, and, you know, Barceló and our Tico Spanish.
Speaker: We have to make it Tico Spanish, right?
Speaker: Yes, and I'm not sure if you're on there, but we'll get some sent to you.
Speaker: So we have the books and we have some lifeguards in Mexico that have translated their first book into Spanish for us.
Speaker: Oh, beautiful.
Speaker: And one of our goals is to get the books into, you know, into Spanish so that, you know,
Speaker: children in your area of the world can get the books and be reading and learning because the books are all about
Speaker: You know, the first book is all about water safety, what to do if you get caught in a rip.
Speaker: You know, they're great little books.
Speaker: So what we, there's truth, you know, my brain is going a million miles an hour now at the moment.
Speaker: But one of the things we can definitely do, I will get you some books then, currently they're in English.
Speaker: But then the other thing that I will do, now we have the charity,
Speaker: we are looking at our online program and how we are, we're going to actually just like do a bit of a refresh of it all.
Speaker: And we will be able to, our charity will be able to sponsor some of your younger people into there.
Speaker: To learn some skills.
Speaker: So they can listen to the videos that Maxie does and learn some skills.
Speaker: So we will 100% organise that.
Speaker: And those skills are not just water or lifeguarding background.
Speaker: That's fire safety, that's first aid, CPR, education.
Speaker: Dislocations, things like simple things like the concussion.
Speaker: Concussions, epipens, so antithelastic reactions.
Speaker: We talk about health and well-being as well.
Speaker: You did talk about before about how lifeguards and yourselves deal with stress.
Speaker: And it's very important as a first responder, as a fire, when we go to a real traumatic fatality or a really bad job, we have that support there.
Speaker: But for people like yourselves, you're saying sometimes you don't get that support.
Speaker: It's very important to make sure that, A, you come together as a group and you make sure that everyone's okay by checking in with them, making sure that they have that support and always, not just once, but constantly checking with them.
Speaker: And then if you can, and it's a great idea trying to get a translation into different languages to seek that support and that help because it's very important to look after your mental health
Speaker: and also physical health as well.
Speaker: But mental health is a big part for first responders.
Speaker: So it's something that we... Absolutely.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: So what is the next... We can translate anything into English, into Spanish, or Costa Rican Spanish, you know, Espanol.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: The Mexican would be good too, but any literature you have on any of that stuff, all that stuff is great.
Speaker: And we can make it in, I don't know, somehow we can get the format where we can print it out in pages and we laminate it and make little books.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Have some hard copies.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: to have sitting on the table and the volunteer or we can take to the schools or you know something we'll make hard copy books think of that we're going to print every page and bind it and make a book yeah absolutely and that i reckon that's a good um like you know because a little bit like yourself you know with we have now the charity and every you know
Speaker: printing a book in another language is a whole project on itself.
Speaker: So I think that's a great, you know, midway step.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: So yeah, I think that's great.
Speaker: That's the next question.
Speaker: So the next question here, guys.
Speaker: So we're towards the back end of the podcast.
Speaker: What is next for Santa Teresa lifeguards?
Speaker: Like what's next?
Speaker: What's on the, what are you, what are you guys planning towards or wanting to achieve?
Speaker: I know we, we spoke about it just before, but what is next?
Speaker: What are your short term goals?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Short term?
Speaker: We have long term too.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We have another headquarters in Hermosa.
Speaker: We're helping the Hermosa community design their program, how it suits them.
Speaker: Maybe it's not a gym they need to fund their program.
Speaker: Maybe it's like a restaurant.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Some kind of business.
Speaker: Also... Carmen.
Speaker: Yeah, we just need, and also, yeah, eventually in the future to get lifeguards at Carmen.
Speaker: We man the towers there, but they need a headquarters as well.
Speaker: It's too far away for us.
Speaker: Sending them on bicycles on long journeys.
Speaker: The thing we can't stress enough is just getting more lifeguards.
Speaker: We need more lifeguards all year round.
Speaker: Instead of getting one Australian per year, it'd be great to get four or five or more.
Speaker: We have...
Speaker: you know, like with, with our social media and we'll definitely, um, you know, put some stuff out for you.
Speaker: One thing that would be good at just, uh, getting closing would be, uh,
Speaker: because the weather here is so good all year round, it doesn't matter what month, whatever month would be good for Australians or the Kiwis to get away.
Speaker: Our rainy season is there a winter.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: And so we were thinking about trying to get together like a lifeguard competition, an international competition here.
Speaker: to network, to grow with other lifeguard associations to get more lifeguards.
Speaker: So we always thought this would be a good place to do, to have the swimming race, have the running race, have the torpedo, have a couple, I don't know, you guys do, you have the whole Olympics and everything.
Speaker: An event to bring the community together to watch lifeguards compete, swim, run.
Speaker: Yeah, it would be a good fundraiser thing, volleyball kind of deal, everything, beach, community.
Speaker: Like a mini world lifeguard games.
Speaker: Something like that.
Speaker: That's one of our dreams and visions is to pull that off.
Speaker: I think we plant the seed on that because that might be something that we can put on the date in the calendar in the future and we'll
Speaker: And we'll try and build an event around that.
Speaker: And we'll see what we can make it happen.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: 100%.
Speaker: I also got to give a shout out to my wife, Christine, who's also part of the Lifeguards.
Speaker: We're our whole family.
Speaker: She does a lot of the accounting and behind the scenes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And looks after a lot of the lifeguards too.
Speaker: Well, we're going to say hello, Christine.
Speaker: Thank you for all your help and for all your, for all your support for the locals of the Costa Rican community of Santa Teresa.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Because as a family, what are you, what are you, what you were doing and, and you know, your energy and passion is just coming through the screen to us like in bucket loads and,
Speaker: You know, it's hard to, you know, when you say what's a short term vision, because I get very much a sense of feeling you're like Maxie and I, we have big goals, we have big visions.
Speaker: We, you know, when you just take them off, don't you?
Speaker: Bite-sized chunks and one step leads you to the next step.
Speaker: And look what you've achieved in nine years.
Speaker: Congratulations, guys.
Speaker: It's an absolute testament to the people you are and what you've done for your community.
Speaker: And it's a lifestyle as well.
Speaker: It's something that you're so fortunate.
Speaker: You have a really tight family that can give so much to people and it's a testament in time.
Speaker: So keep up.
Speaker: And I know what you're saying about your climate.
Speaker: I've looked and I think that your climate would be very similar to far north Queensland in Australia.
Speaker: So Cairns and that kind of area.
Speaker: And they almost have a separate, their wet season is, so their season is winter.
Speaker: for the South of Australia and their wet season is summer.
Speaker: So when like November, November to March is their wet season.
Speaker: And quite often they may get cyclones and things like that.
Speaker: It's kind of, so they are like the opposite to basically anywhere that if you know sort of Australia, sort of south of Brisbane is like what we would say summer is sort of, you know, November, December, January, February.
Speaker: Whereas, yeah, their wet season, I think would be more aligned with your climate.
Speaker: So like I said, we'll definitely, you know, when this podcast comes up, myself and Lee are on holidays at the moment when this is out.
Speaker: But this is going to be out.
Speaker: We'll make sure that people know about you guys.
Speaker: Yeah, 100%.
Speaker: You're friends now and that's the way we go.
Speaker: We pick people up.
Speaker: We're mates and we, anytime that we can help you.
Speaker: You just like, yeah, message it.
Speaker: Thomas, I'll forgive you, mate, that dad joke at the start.
Speaker: So do you want to tell everyone that dad joke?
Speaker: Come on, give us your dad joke, Thomas.
Speaker: Why does Australians, why do they have 4X?
Speaker: Why do they have 4X, Thomas?
Speaker: Why do they?
Speaker: Because they can't spell beer.
Speaker: That is good.
Speaker: That's the second time I've heard it.
Speaker: You see, we've only been friends now, Thomas, for 45 minutes and the banter has already started.
Speaker: And, you know, I couldn't be happier.
Speaker: I couldn't be happier.
Speaker: So one thing to finish off, I'm not sure if you're aware, but we have a Rescue Squad and a Live, Learn, Survive playlist on Spotify.
Speaker: And everyone that comes on our podcast, we ask them for their upbeat song that, you know, is maybe on in the tower or on at the beach that,
Speaker: It can be two.
Speaker: You can have two songs.
Speaker: Avalon and Thomas.
Speaker: Give us your songs for the playlists.
Speaker: We don't really promote having our lifeguards rocking out on the towers.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Not in the tower then.
Speaker: At the gym.
Speaker: It happens.
Speaker: It happens.
Speaker: At the gym.
Speaker: Getting ready for the tower.
Speaker: At the gym.
Speaker: There's a lot of music there.
Speaker: Alice, you met.
Speaker: She'll help us figure that out and get the right soundtracks to you guys for sure.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So have you got a song, just like your favorite song?
Speaker: Favorite song at the moment then.
Speaker: We're going to say My Hips Don't Lie by Shakira.
Speaker: Because Shakira is in our town right now.
Speaker: Is she really?
Speaker: She's here and she's driving our town.
Speaker: We will take that.
Speaker: Her friends are giving her surf lessons right now.
Speaker: And she's about four and a half feet tall.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And it's incredible.
Speaker: She's hitting me on the tail.
Speaker: I'm not supposed to be talking about it.
Speaker: But yeah, you know, she's here and she's bringing her boyfriend, Lewis Martin here.
Speaker: Lewis Hamilton, the Formula One race there.
Speaker: Oh, we know all about Lewis.
Speaker: We don't even know who he is over here.
Speaker: We don't know who he is.
Speaker: As an English-born girl, I absolutely know who he is.
Speaker: He's a superstar.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And Avalon, have you got a song, a favorite song that you really like or get your- I would say the new Top Gun song.
Speaker: I think it's by One Republic.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, yes.
Speaker: Wasn't that a good movie?
Speaker: Finally a good remake.
Speaker: Public.
Speaker: I Ain't Worried, Counting Stars.
Speaker: Sorry, I Ain't Worried.
Speaker: I'm Not Worried, yeah.
Speaker: I'm Not Worried.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: That song.
Speaker: We've made it some of our Instagram reels because it goes really good with the lifeguard workouts.
Speaker: Yeah, nice.
Speaker: Love it.
Speaker: It's added to the playlist on Spotify.
Speaker: So if you are looking for it, Max's Rescue Squad playlist.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: It's on there.
Speaker: And keep an eye out.
Speaker: Yeah, thank you, guys.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I should have said my favorite song was the Bee Gees, Stayin' Alive, because that's the CPL song, right?
Speaker: The CPL?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's already in there.
Speaker: Yeah, it's already in there.
Speaker: And we've had some gone along the world with kids with Stayin' Alive.
Speaker: Great song.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: So important.
Speaker: No, this has been a great chat.
Speaker: We've loved it.
Speaker: Thank you so much.
Speaker: And you know what, guys?
Speaker: We'll keep in touch and we'll let people know about what you guys are doing, but we'll do a podcast maybe six months time to see how things are traveling and how things are going.
Speaker: We'd love to come over.
Speaker: I'd love to come over there, guys.
Speaker: We'd love to do some training sessions.
Speaker: And once we get, like, the whole point of us being up in Newcastle right now is to plan the online space.
Speaker: So we will be able to...
Speaker: talk around the table today about how we can incorporate lifeguards on the other side of the world to be able to learn stuff as well.
Speaker: So hopefully we can get that program to you guys sooner rather than later and you can learn all together and be bigger and better and save people's lives.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Amazing.
Speaker: Stay safe.
Speaker: Give everyone our love.
Speaker: Say hi to all the lifeguards and the team.
Speaker: And we will definitely – we will –
Speaker: Make sure we do this again in a few months and we'll see how we're all tracking.
Speaker: In Costa Rica, we say Pura Vida.
Speaker: Pura Vida.
Speaker: Pura Vida.
Speaker: Love it.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Thank you, guys.
Speaker: Take care.
Speaker: Thank you so much.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: We'll see you.
Speaker: Over and out.
