Yet, the years came and went, and I never had the opportunity to take a trip to Belize. That is until this year. In December, I received a card from my father with a surprise inside. My grandmother had passed away a year or two ago and my father wanted the grandsons to share in part of the inheritance. So, accompanying my Christmas card was a check and a note to do something significant with the money.

I struggled with what constituted "significant." I wanted to travel, but couldn't imagine doing the tourist thing. I was really at a loss. Then I remembered hearing, years ago, about an organization that matched up volunteers on vacation with scientists doing research. I thought it was called Earthwatch. So, I head off to the Internet, found the Earthwatch web site, and began to look at what they do.

I looked through the catalog and perused all the options. There were studies of marsupial moles in Australia, the hunt for water in Inner Mongolia, and saving cheetahs in Africa. But, what caught my attention was research on Manatees in Belize. Belize, the country I'd always been fascinated with in my youth. And, I'd be spending two weeks on an island 8 miles off the coast of Belize in the Caribbean. I'd found my "significant" activity-I'd participate in an Earthwatch expedition. It was the perfect first foray into service vacationing.

So, I called up Earthwatch, asked some questions, paid my deposit, and signed up for my first expedition.

This is a story of what I did those two weeks in August.