Warm holiday greetings to you and your loved ones from all of us in Costa Rica at Tropical Adventures!

As we prepare for our year-end holiday activities and begin to implement our exciting new 2008 projects, I thought it only fitting to look back and share with you our accomplishments and learnings from the last couple of years and thank you for your generous support.

Since its inception in 2005, our organization has grown at lightning speed. In just this year alone along with our over 220 volunteers from around the world, our small foundation made quite a mark as we:

• Raised funds to replace the roof for the Hone Creek Elementary School
• Began a project to grow organic food to feed the poor in Puerto Viejo de Limon
• Taught English and tutored hundreds of children throughout the country
• Saved thousands of sea turtle eggs from being poached
• Saved hundreds of iguanas from being eaten or killed
• Painted a high school in Guanacaste
• Taught environmental education to hundreds of school children
• Planted over 6,000 trees and medicinal plants
• Cleaned countless of miles of beaches
• Painted a retirement home on the Talamanca Indigenous Reservation
• Hosted an international corporate “green retreat” with 125 participants

More amazing to me, however, are the personal stories from our host families and children in our schools. Watching them prosper financially, educationally and emotionally over the last couple of years has been the most rewarding part of my job.

Sometimes it’s as simple as watching a family earn the funds to be able to buy a front door where there were none before, or be able to buy themselves a stove for cooking. Other times I see children developing stronger skills in school or stronger self-esteem. I see these positive changes as a direct effect of the presence of our amazing volunteers and our ongoing projects in our communities. It truly makes me proud to be part of this organization.

In 2008, in addition to our ongoing projects we plan to open a Spanish language school, expand our work with sea turtles underneath the water, begin working with a dolphin research program and a monkey refuge center, run a Summer Camp for families, lead eight free medical and dental clinics throughout Central America and expand our educational programs in our elementary schools. By 2009, we are working towards implementing a program to help drug addicts and creating a rehabilitation program. There are currently only a shocking total of 8 beds available in Costa Rica in their social medical program for those needing rehabilitation assistance, with a waiting list of thousands.

As you know, the cost of these projects is great and does not get covered by just the price of our volunteer packages.

As is true for many non-profits, we are running at a deficit. Right now we are about $40,000 in debt. However, we’re happy to say we have a solid, 2-year plan in place, which we believe will enable us to be fully self-supportive. In the meantime, we are hoping to find a way to pull ourselves out of the current debt that we have.

In the event that you may be planning any year-end giving, we’d love for you to consider Tropical Adventures. Any amount would help. Even if you only have $1 to spare, we’ll gladly accept your generous gift. We accept credit cards, PayPal and checks.

To make a donation by credit card or PayPal, simply click here to visit our secure website or call our toll-free number at 1-800-832-9419. Checks may be made out to the “Tropical Adventures Foundation” and may be sent to our US address:

Tropical Adventures Foundation
1775 E Palm Canyon Dr.
Suite H-341
Palm Springs CA 92264

We’re also offering a wide variety of Tropical Adventures apparel and gift items available at our Online Marketplace, such as t-shirts, hats, mugs, calendars, etc. Proceeds go directly to support our programs.

We can’t thank you enough for all your generous and loving support from this year. Please know you have our best wishes for a safe and wonderful holiday season. And we hope to hear from you soon!

Scott Pralinsky
Executive Director

One of the nicest parts of being a Costa Rica-based non-profit organization and being very small is that all of our volunteers become a significant part of our family. Each and every person who takes time out of their lives to share of their talents, resources and energy is valued tremendously by not only Tropical Adventures, but also by our host families, children, schools and communities.

Costa Rica and the people here are so wonderful, it's pretty tough not to fall in love! It's not unusual for our volunteers to continue on in a relationship with Tropical Adventures and the communities here. It's especially normal for our volunteers to continue on with their relationship with their host families. Many of our volunteers have flown back to visit their host families, bringing with them husbands, wives, children and friends. These are relationships that last span the globe and last a lifetime.

Occasionally, an individual or family is so moved by what they see of our work as an organization here that they feel they want to participate on a deeper level. That was the case recently when The Millar Family made a most generous donation of $10,000 to our Tropical Adventures Foundation.

Garth, Brenda (Millar), Aidan, Callum, and Rory from Alberta, Canada were our very first family to arrive as volunteers back over a year ago. They actually drove all the way from Alberta to Costa Rica together! It was a most exciting experience for all of us. Since then, we've had many families join us as volunteers. As a matter-of-fact, family volunteering has become one of our most popular programs.

It is because of the generosity of people such as the Campbell Family that our foundation is able to continue on the work that we do here in Costa Rica. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts, as do the children and families of the communities we serve! Without such help, we would simply not be able to exist.

Anyone else interested in making a tax-deductible donation should contact Scott Pralinsky, Executive Director, for more information, or merely click here to make an online donation.

Thanks again!

As you probably know by now, our non-profit foundation, the Casa Milagro Foundation, has teamed up with Helping Hands Costa Rica to build a new roof for the Hone Creek Elementary School near Puerto Viejo here in Costa Rica. Teaching English in this school was actually our very first volunteer project when we began back in 2005.

The fund raiser will be held on Tuesday, September 4th from 5:30 to 9:00 pm at the Time Out Tavern in Escazu. Tickets are only $10 and include beer, burgers and door prizes.

All proceeds go towards replacing the badly damaged roof at the Hone Creek Elementary School.

Here are the directions to the Tavern: 300 Mts South of the Costa Rica Country Club, Beige building with black pillars. Their telephone number is: 289– 3217.

If you can't make it, but would like to donate toward the roof replacement, please click here. We would really appreciate it! We're still quite a ways away from our goal of $4,000 and could certainly use the help!

We finally have a new, but simple website for our mother foundation, the Casa Milagro Foundation. It has links to our three main project groups and we’ll be working hard to update the site and provide more information as time goes on. We hope you have a chance to take a peek at it. Let us know what you think!

Tropical Adventures and the Casa Milagro Foundation have a new home in Puerto Viejo. This home acts as our Welcome Center, volunteer residence and Spanish school. We’re very excited to have a real presence in town now, as well as having a place for volunteers to gather, get to know one another and spend time together.

This new house is about 900 feet from the ocean; still close enough to hear the waves. And it’s only about 1 mile from the center of town.

There are presently 4 bedrooms available in the house. Each can hold up to 3 people. We also rent out rooms to non-volunteers when available. Our website and online reservation system can be found by clicking here.   

We offer breakfast, a full kitchen, common TV, high-speed wireless access, laundry service, boogie board and snorkel rentals, as well as bike rentals.

We hope you’ll stop by and see us soon!

You have arrived at this page because you enrolled online, sent us an email or purchased something from our store.

All of us at Tropical Adventures and the Casa Milagro Foundation thank you from the bottom of our hearts!