Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica

I have always dreamed of visiting Costa Rica, actually I considered studying abroad there last summer but my parents wouldn't allow it because the cost were a little ridiculous. Costa Rica has over one fourth of its land covered with natural reserves and conservations, wildlife refuges and national parks. There are so many beautiful and breathtaking places in Costa Rica and I would love to visit all of them someday but for the moment, I'm going to focus on my visit to the Corcovado National Park  located on the Osa Peninsula. The Corcovado National Park is home to the only largest tropical lowland rain forest in the WORLD! It is famous for holding 3% of the biodiversity on this side of the planet and it also has a huge amount of endangered species. While visiting the Park, you could experience approximately 6,000  different insects, 500 species of trees, 367 birds, 140 mammals, 117 amphibians and reptiles and 40 species of freshwater fish.

http://www.agarman.dial.pipex.com/ocelot.htm

 One of the endangered species from this region is the Ocelot which is part of the sub-genus Leopardus. The Ocelot is hunted and prized for their distinctive fur which has led to the Ocelot's extinction in some of its range.
 The Nature Conservancy is helping to save the rain forests of
 Costa Rica from the outside world of improved transportation
 and expanding developments. Osa's forest are starting to disappear due to lands being cleared for logging and agricultural at a higher rate than anywhere else in Costa Rica. The Costa Rica government is doing what they can to save the land by acquiring and protecting lands, strenghtening the management of protected land, hiring and training park staff, establishing a network of marine protected areas, ect. The Nature Conservancy has also launched a program where you can adopt a acre of the forest to help the conservancy protect and restore this highly threatened region. Here is the link below if anyone is interested:

https://support.nature.org/site/Donation2?4380.donation=form1&idb=1265079635&df_id=4380

a little stumbleupon

Here is something that would have to do with the things we were talking about today in class. I found it interesting and relevant:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/5LFyHa/www.breathingearth.net/

Proposal:

This project, won't be exactly a project, but more on the lines of a blog that brings you along with me on the planning of my adventure around the world after college. My blog's main theme has to do with my goal to travel the world when I graduate from college. It may be 2 years down the road, but I believe that there is no rush on finding the wonderful things in life. Traveling the world is such a broad phrase, but traveling is not the only thing i want to do, I want to truly experience and feel the Nature and Life that we can't find in the technology based country that we live in today.
    I grew up in a small town, out in the country where all there was around us was nature. After last year and moving to Kalamazoo to go to school, my view on the way I thought most people experience life, changed. It was a hard thing to get use to; to move from dirt roads that stretch miles with turns and pot holes that you know by heart and having to stop every quarter of a mile because a deer, raccoon or possum ran out in the road ahead of you, to a city where roads are never dirt roads. The last time I think I saw a dirt road in Kalamazoo was when I went to the disk golf course behind the frats, which by the way is a really, really shitty course. Where I come from, I use to lay out at night on the trampoline and just stare at the sky and listen. It was so peaceful to hear animals scurrying through the leaves or my dog waking up in the middle of the night and the jingle of his chain. The sound of the night alone, so calm and comforting as it invites you to go to sleep. Around here in Kalamazoo, if you want to lay outside at night, you either are at risk to get molested by a drunk college boy, getting jumped or getting arrested. People around here and most of the world never get to experience the true nature that the world holds. I want to find spots that have true beauty, natural nature and are the most peaceful and uncorrupted places known in the world. I may not be able to experience these places first hand yet but I will be creating a list of places I would like to visit and experience all up to the day I will be blogging after visiting these of these places!