About the Proprietor, Mike Boston: I was born in Rawalpindi, Pakistan of Irish parents. Soon after my birth, we moved to Trinidad &Tobago in the West Indies, where I spent the next 14 years of my life – it was there that my father, known throughout the islands as “Snake Man”, bequeathed to me his passion for snakes and crocodiles and, indeed, the natural world.

I completed my secondary level schooling in Northern Ireland, and for the next five years worked as a research assistant for the Department of Industrial & Forensic Science as a water pollution analyst. However, biology was my passion, and I moved to England to become an undergraduate. In 1979, I graduated with honors in Biology from the University of Portsmouth.

After graduating, I worked for many years in the Ulster Museum, Belfast, as an Entomologist, studying the taxonomy and faunistics of parasitic wasps (the Ichneumonidae!) – I was elected Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society of London for my published contributions to entomological research. Subsequent to this I took another position in the Ulster Museum working on the conservation of bats in Ireland – Indeed, I was one of the founding members of the Northern Ireland Bat Group, and Ireland’s first professional batman!!

Accepting an offer to establish the first Tropical Butterfly and Reptile House in Northern Ireland, I went on to develop and manage this project into one of the province’s leading tourist attractions. I then moved to Scotland and began a project with The Highlands & Islands Development Board to create rainforest exhibit entitled “The Living Rainforest”. This was to be an expansion of the ideas I gained from my experiences in Northern Ireland. However, a 29% fall in tourism in 1994 spelled the end to the project. During this period I wielded a pickaxe and shovel to make ends meet – I was a laborer, and loved it!

However, I yearned to return to the tropics, and to rainforests that I so love. Bewitched by the wild beauty of the Osa Peninsula during a visit in 1995, I returned to there to live and work the following year. In 1998, I established Osa Aventura. Since then, I have been imbuing in others that passion for tropical rainforests that my father imbued in me in my formative years.

About the Company, Osa Avenura: The establishment of Osa Aventura was for me an indulgence. I am an adventurer by nature and all of my life I have had an insatiable passion for tropical rainforests. And it is, after all, human nature to want to excite our interests and passions in others. So Osa Aventura has formulated adventure and exploratory tours with this intention.

Osa Aventura is an adventure tour outfitter based in the provincial town of Puerto Jimenez, on the Osa Peninsula. It presents on this site a selection of adventures tours designed to explore the length and breadth of the remote Osa Peninsula (see “Why the Osa?”). Based on many years living and working in the tropics, and on an extensive knowledge of the Osa, I have tailored a selection of multi-activity, adventure itineraries to explore the most spectacular and exciting aspects of this pristine, wild Peninsula.

The foundations of Osa Aventura’s operations are the ethics of professionalism, reliability and integrity. It aims to introduce people to fascinating natural richness and beauty of tropical rainforests, and thus to make a contribution, however small, to the collective awareness of the urgent need to conserve these precious environments (info on “The Osa Campaign”).