ABSTRACT
The Wisconsin dairy farm where I grew up was far away on that July day in 1970 when I stepped off a bus at Hacienda La Pacifica, in Guanacaste Province of Costa Rica. Along with 23 fellow students in the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS) course, I had just traveled four hours from the capital city of San Jose. As my feet hit the ground, I was startled when the resident howling monkey male began howling in a cacophony of sound. Though I did not know it at the time, I had embarked on a life’s journey that since has taken me to many parts of the world including Belize, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras, Mexico, Madagascar, Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico, Trinidad, Uganda, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Zanzibar but has always brought me back to Hacienda La Pacifica, a research oasis that I discovered on that fateful day more than 43 years ago.
