National Geographic Student Expeditions Visits Diving Safaris Costa Rica!

We recently hosted two groups of students participating in the National Geographic Student Expeditions program who were here in Costa Rica to participate in two week community service projects. Community service projects can be anything, such as clearing forest trails, teaching English to students at an elementary school, or painting a health center. Volunteers can help build local housing, or pitch in on the restoration of a community building. They can organize a village cleanup, plant trees, or develop a conservation project that the local youth can continue. What a fantastic initiative!

National Geographic found out about us via Putney Student Travel, who visited us a couple of years ago. Lisa Cates, Expedition Guide for the group, is a photographer and adventure traveler who is originally from San Diego, CA, and who attended UCLA. After working with National Geographic Adventure Magazine, Lisa traveled through Europe and Mongolia, finally ending up in New Orleans, LA. Now she’s in Costa Rica with NatGeo Student Expeditions. Pretty cool resume, right? We hope to be updating this post soon with some of her wonderful images. Check out her website, Lisa Cates Photography, and lose yourself in nature, adventure, sports and animals.

National Geographic Student Expeditions Volunteers — “I’ve never snorkeled before!”

So it was the final 3 days of the students’ 14 day community service duty and time for an intermission. And that meant SNORKELING! We hosted two age groups on two different days of snorkeling. The teen group who were here on Sunday are featured in this post. We had a younger group of kids on Saturday who had just as much fun.

We did two local sites at las Islas Pelonas – Punto Argentina and Tortuga. It was a gorgeous, “green season” Guanacaste day with calm seas, blue water and sky, fresh air, sunshine and balmy breezes.

Dive Instructor, Chaya Guertin, lead the snorkeling group. Noted Chaya, “Some of the kids we took out had never been snorkeling before, so it was great to teach them how to and then see them get excited about the marine life. A few of theses kids were just naturals, free diving like they were born doing it – absolutely no fear.”

Well, there you have it. Born adventurers!

Bulls Eye Ray. One of the many undersea creatures you’ll see while snorkeling here.

Be sure to check out all of the National Geographic Student Expeditions student travel destinations and follow along with their blog posts to find out what’s going on in the field! You can find them here on Facebook.