Diana Getty, is an all - American girl who has recently experienced an adventure of a life time.  But this adventure is not going to last a life time for it has whet her appetite for more liberties and opportunities like, her Costa Rican Adventure.
    Diana grew up in a small town, raised on a farm and limited in her sights and adventures.  The taste for adventure grew at a young age and having educated parents, they knew it was wise to encourage her sense of adventure.  When limited in Geography, you must expand internally - the mind can take you to many places.  Education is the key to ALL doors.
    Today, Diana teaches (Biology and Aquatic Science) and is working on her Master's in Education (soon to be Biology).  This lady thought that she had been adventurous and busy until her trip to Costa Rica, now she is aware that being an Assistant SCUBA Diver Instructor, and an active Conservationist was barely making waves.

    So, what is so great about Costa Rica, the places of focus on her trip which was sponsored by Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation (WWNFF) and funded by National Science Foundation (NSF) and Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS) were La Selva, Las Cruces, and Palo Verde.
    WWNFF, set up this three week adventure to be both a learning, teaching, and fun filled experience.  The teachers that were selected had been given an opportunity to study in the field and acquire information to take to the classroom.  Plus, to take what they had learned and teach other teachers in a workshop. Here is a few of those experiences:
 
 
 

	Here is the group at Palo Verde, this group was focusing on secondary growth forest management.  These are teachers in the field learning and working hard, so they can take their data and information they have collected to the classroom .
Speaking of teachers working and playing hard; there is as much to learn and experience when time was taken to enjoy the surroundings.	The sites, animals, and colours.  WOW!
Teachers make the most of their field experiences, also.  If you don't enjoy the time to play and learn the whole trip would have been lost on you.

So, what exactly took place at this Costa Rican Adventure:

Our fearless adventurer's began at a grand hotel, called Hotel Irazu.  We found out that we would travel to different environments one called Palo Verde which is a Dry Forest, Las Selva a Tropical Rain Forest, and Las Cruces a White Cloud Forest. These place were all so unique and beautiful in completely separate ways.

Palo Verde, was a thick forested and warm climated area.  There were cattle pastures surrounding the park and iguanas everywhere that you looked.  The people who outfitted and ran the post were extremely friendly and took such hospitable care of us. I have such a passion for horses and there just so happened to be a large herd of horses that were owned by one of the cattle farmers that worked at the park.

Each teacher was expected to join a team and conduct an inquiry based experiment, the choices and topics were unlimited. The stipulations were that we could conduct this experiment within three days, write an experimental paper over the topic, and present the topic to the rest of our group. This was the best, most exciting working vacation that I have ever experienced. The group that I joined, focused on Land Management. The Palo Verde park had been purchasing land and trying to return the pastures that they had purchased back into forest.  These forests are considered to be secondary, meaning that these are forests that are returning to forest after being altered. The lands that are returning to forest often include invasive species that had been introduced to the lands. For example, the farmers had introduced an African grass called Jiragua. This grass was very successful and competed with the growing forests. The park came up with a brilliant idea to compromise on forest management and assist the farmers, they did this by allowing the farmers to run their cattle in the woods. The question that came about and that had been studied in depth was, is this procedure a good one? The group wanted to conduct the study themselves and compare their data with other experimenters.

The study that was conducted compared running cattle in the forested environments, leaving the forest alone, and conducting a controlled burn once a year. The group came to the conclusion that running the cattle was a successful management plan and that it was a great compromise with the farmers. The farmers, do not make a lot of money ranching and the government is willing to compromise by purchasing their land and compensate by allowing them to run their cattle and give incentives.

This study was interesting and eye-opening I was and am really amazed in regards to the co-operation that has taken place between government and the farmers.  I hope that I can successfully transfer the need to control the land and co-operatively work to conserve our precious resources.  In the US, many of our wetlands and primary forests are at risk.

The next stop was to a station that had all the accommodations of a well run camp and what it was lacking in the down-home welcoming feel it made up in having several post-doctoral and doctoral students working in their labs. The group chose experiments yet again following the three basic stipulations and choosing partners interested in similar topics. The partners that I decided to work with were all curious and egar to work with the poison dart frog. There happened to be a doctoral student working on parental care and the choices that the female makes.  The Dendrobates p., in Las Selva has a unique parenting style, the male guards the eggs and the female returns to the clutch after the eggs have become tadpoles. She then takes one tadpole at a time upon her back and places it in a Bromeliad axial.  The Bromeliad is a plant that grows on another tree and is called an epiphyte.  There are several different species of Bromeliad, and the post-doc student, Maura Maples, found that there are only two that this particular frog likes to deposit her tadpoles. The female will make frequent trips to each plant that houses a tadpole and feed them unfertilized eggs until they turn into frogs. Why does the frog chose these Bromeliads? There was also spiders that were found called Ctenids on the larger Bromeliad and we questioned if the frogs chose the smaller Bromeliad more frequently then the larger because of the spider's presence. As we delved into our experiment we realized that our questions were impossible to answer in so few days but the experience of working with a real scientists and following the research mores really gave us the idea what it was like to conduct a REAL scientific experiment.

I really hope that I can show and teach my kids this excitement and give them the opportunity to work hand -in- hand with a real experimental scientist.

Well, we had one last stop Las Cruces "the crosses", the history and rich cultural environment I can barely begin to describe. This would take a thousand more pages and this web site is over due as it is... So, Las Cruces this was a resort and the coolest thing is that we stayed in an old library that was reported to house a couple that had died twenty years ago and were still frequenting the building.

The project that we chose had to do with water quality, because on one of our hikes we learned that the town San Vito had to switch from the river use to an aquifer because of contaminates. The river that we looked at was called Rio Jaba and along the river was a slaughter house, coffee processing plant, and cement factory. We wondered if these businesses were a contributing factor to the decline of the river.  Having to keep our experiment simple we had to do simple tests and not assume that what we found was because of the activity but imply that it may have made a difference because of the locales that we chose. The team chose a site before the active sites and about 200 meters beyond. The water smelled different and looked different in each of those sites. I t appeared obvious that the businesses were creating damage but we really had no concrete proof.

I would like to make this and eye-opening experiment by conducting something similar to this at my school, we do have a river and pond.  This would make for an real interesting study.

As my time comes to an end I feel very sad and I am afraid of all the memories that are going to melt away, but I do know that Costa Rica has made a strong impression physically, mentally, and emotionally.