This is a letter I received from my daughter, a University of Arizona graduate student working with students for 4 weeks in Costa Rica. She always wanted to work for National Geographic when she was younger. When I saw your blog, I couldn't help myself and send it to you. She will be back home in Rhode Island next Tuesday.
She had some great pictures - but I don't think they copied into this:

Dear family and friends,
It is Saturday night, and I am sitting in my room at the field station in Costa Rica. I’ve decided to make the most of my evening by preparing a letter for you, which I will send when I make a quick trip to the dreaded town of Cariari on Monday.

I have a feeling that this is going to be the best email I’ve ever sent. Why you ask? Well, because I’m going to include pictures of our resident monkeys here at La Suerte. And, I will show you some pictures of weird bugs and snakes and sloths too. But in all honesty, it will be the monkeys that make this email.

There are three types of monkeys that inhabit the rainforest surrounding the field station: capuchins, howler monkeys, and spider monkeys. Capuchin monkeys are arguably the smartest monkeys on the planet and have a special talent for acting. This is why they are often cast in movies and sitcoms. Here’s a picture I took of a capuchin:

Now I know you are all thinking, “Aww, what a cute little monkey! How I wish I had one of my very own to hold!” Indeed, they are adorable and you can train them to do all kinds of neat things for you. For example, there is a man in Santa Monica, CA who has a pet capuchin. On any given day, you can find them at the Promenade. The man sits in the middle of the strip while his capuchin, in his little suit and hat, approaches tourists with his hand out, panhandling for money (just so you know, the monkey is trained to accept silver coins or paper bills only- no pennies please). When you give the little guy your change, he puts it in his suit pocket and tips his hat at you with a gesture so charming it compels you to quickly rummage through your purse in search of more loose change (this monkey could put his kids through college just on the money I’ve given to him on numerous trips through Santa Monica).

Before you get carried away and start calling up your local exotic pet dealer, let me first warn you about capuchins…they can be real trouble makers. Sure, sometimes they are cool, and when you come upon them in the forest they do cute little upside down poses for you and they let you watch them and take pictures. But other times, they get directly above you on a tree limb and pee on you, or they freak out and start breaking branches and throwing things at you.

Take Segundo for instance. He is the alpha male of one of the three troops of capuchins here. The other day he threw nest of fire ants at a group of students who were collecting data in the forest. He hit them too! The students had to sprint back to the cabins, ripping off clothes as they went, because the ants got under their clothes. One of the students even got some ants in her eye.

Here is a picture of the notorious Segundo:

Compared to capuchins, the howler monkeys are quite tranquil. They spend all day long foraging for leaves high up in the canopy, and lounging around on branches. Howlers are fairly easy to find for a couple reasons. First, they are extremely noisy. They have huge frog-like throats and make barking howls (The other day, while looking for howlers one of our students let out a loud belch and the howlers responded to it. Now, whenever she’s watching howlers she burps just for fun and we all have to reprimand her for provoking the monkeys). Howlers are also extremely stinky. Even if you can’t hear the howlers, you can find them on smell alone (you always know when a howlers near because they exude a very peculiar musky odor).

Unfortunately, I don’t have any exceptional howler pictures yet because I’ve been spending most of my time chasing the capuchins and spider monkeys. I do, however, have a mediocre one of a male that I will share with you.
It is rather difficult to tell the sex of capuchins and spider monkeys, but not howlers. You always know when you’re looking at a male. If you examine the center of the photo below, just to the right of the branch, you will understand what I mean. Really, it’s obnoxious. I apologize for the graphic image. Honestly, the sun was in my eyes when I took this photo and I had no idea what I was shooting.

The spider monkeys are the most elusive of the Costa Rican primates. Even if you are lucky enough to find them, it is difficult to keep up with them for long because they move so fast through the trees, using their prehensile tail as a fifth limb. I’ve held a grudge against spider monkeys ever since one bit my friend at a bar in Belize five years ago, but now they are growing on me. Here is a juvenile male that I came across the a few weeks ago:

Michelle, the lead instructor of the field course, and LeAndra the other teaching assistant, are both primatology experts. I feel incredibly lucky to be here with them. They have taught me so much in the last three weeks. At first I was terrible at finding monkeys because I didn’t know about their migration patterns, or the trees they eat/sleep in. I have gotten much better though (thanks to them), not just at spotting monkeys but other creatures as well. One day, I even saw a sloth. And that’s pretty cool because sloths are hard to find (the first day of class Michelle told the students that the first to spot a sloth and photograph it would receive a bottle of rum). Here is the sloth that I found (it looks like Muppet!):

In contrast to the mammals, the amphibians here at La Suerte are easy to find. The poison dart frogs, of the strawberry and green/black varieties, are ubiquitous. They are almost as cute as the monkeys! See for yourself. Here is a strawberry poison dart frog:

Next, we have the green and black poison dart frog. In addition to our primatology class, there is also a photography class going on at La Suerte. Yesterday, the photo students caught one of the dart frogs in the forest and brought it back to for a photo shoot. Here is the picture that I took:

We also have a lot of toads that hang around the house that the instructors are staying in. They are always getting into the kitchen and the bathrooms, and they like to scare the crap out of you in the middle of the night. The other day, one was in the shower with me. It was kind of creepy, but it’s useless to try to remove them. They just come back in. See if you can find the toad:

Though they are sometimes a nuisance, the toads are the least of our worries in the house. There are far worse things, such as bats and junebugs. Oh, but before I get to that, let me show you a picture of where we are staying:

As many of you well know, we have a bit of a flying squirrel problem back at my house in Exeter. I used to get so freaked out when I would hear them run through the walls or see one in the living room. The bats have helped me to overcome my fear of those squirrels. I would take squirrels over bats any time.

LeAndra and I, along with Jessie the photography instructor, stay on the 2nd floor of the main house. The 2nd floor is arranged as follows: a large living room surrounded by 5 bedrooms. All of the bedrooms on the second floor have doors, but the rooms are not completely enclosed, as there are open spaces between the tops of the doors and the ceiling. What does this mean with regards to bats? Well, when bats get into the living room (and they do ALL THE TIME), they don’t just get confined to the living room. They have free access to your bedroom. In the middle of the night you will feel something whoosh over your head and low and behold, it is a bat.

The worst part about all this is that we have ceiling fans in the living room and in all of the bedrooms (except for mine, THANK GOD) and sometimes the bats will accidentally fly into the fans and drop dead, or injured on the floor…if your lucky that is. LeAndra sometimes loses sleep because the ceiling fan in her room is directly above her bed (last year an instructor had a dead bat land on her while she was sleeping). Last week I found an injured bat right outside my bedroom door. It had broken its wing on a ceiling fan, and Israel (the station manager) concluded that it would never recover. I will spare you details about what happened to the poor little bat. Rest assured that he is in bat heaven now. And there are no ceiling fans in bat heaven.

I’m not going to say much about the junebugs except that they are repulsive and I will forever have nightmares about their little wiry legs running across my skin. There is no escaping them. I present to you a picture of our bathroom sink last night.

I realize that I am being ridiculously overdramatic about the bats and junebugs. Despite their creepiness, they do not present any real danger. So, I will move this letter along (am I already at 7 pages already?) and get to the REALLY scary stuff in the rainforest.

 Snakes. Hog-nosed vipers, tropical rattle-snakes, boa constrictors, and the terrifying Fer-de-Lance- the most poisonous snake here. Ok, I haven’t exactly seen any of these snakes yet. Probably because I am always looking up in the trees for monkeys. But I have seen some snakes around the house.
Look how brave I am with the poisonous corral snake that we found outside the student cabins! (OK, OK I’m not so brave. The snake was dead).

And here is one of the photography students, Josh, holding a snake that he caught. This snake is actually alive. And it bit him in the hand because he is always doing stupid things like catching live snakes instead of dead ones. You have to cut him some slack though. He’s from Mystic, Connecticut.

 Spiders. Big ones. They frequently (strategically?) stretch their webs across the forest trails. I have walked face first into countless spider webs. Nasty. No bites yet though…fingers crossed…

 Bridges that you must cross to navigate the forest. Structurally unsound bridges over jungle rivers (possibly with caymans in them)? Enough said.

And finally….the scariest thing I have encountered in Costa Rica ….

COWS!!!!

One of the forest trails leads out to a cow pasture owned by some wealthy Germans. After accidentally going the wrong way on a walk the other day, LeAndra and I ran into these seemingly docile bovines. This picture was taken about 10 seconds before they started chasing us. I was so scared that we were going to get stampeded that I ditched LeAndra and dove through a hole in a barbed wire fence. Do Germans train their cows to do this kind of thing? I think I read somewhere that they do…

In any case, LeAndra and I escaped the cow attack and now we look back at the incident and laugh. Nervously, of course. Here is a picture of me and the lovely LeAndra after one of our other adventures which involved crawling through the mud in a patch of thorn bushes. We have so much fun together.

I’m sure that at this point in the letter I will have lost most of my audience. Those of you who are still reading…well…you are my true friends. I know who you are and will reward you with Costa Rican souvenirs. Maybe. I’ll at least bring you some Mantequilla Galletas- the best cookies in the world. Maybe. If I don’t lose them in a poker game.

Can you break down and list some of the equipment you took?

It is wonderful to hear of your stories. When you look at a perfect photograph it is hard to imagine all the work the photograper has gone through to capture that image.
As a little girl I have always been awed by the photography in national geographic magazines and wanted to be a national geographic photographer. What advice would you give someone who wanted to pursue a career like yours?

I´m a fan of the magazine, I really enjoy the work you do and I think is the best life a guy could expect for, I love photography, i´ve learned a lot looking at those awesome pictures at the magazine, so is there anything, an advice you can give me? Cause i really want to get a job like yours. Thanks for your time.
Pura Vida.

That's pretty amazing. I love photography, but am a much better writer and have no complaints about the freelance writing life style - though I don't get to travel nearly as much as I hoped. I can definitely see why you're stoked about sharing your job and experiences with anyone who will listen. Do you have a favorite photograph assignment or location that sticks out to you? Thanks for sharing.