The Savegre Valley of Costa Rica existed as an uninhabited wilderness of tropical montane forest until around 1955, when a hunting party accidentally stumbled upon the valley while chasing their dogs. The crystal clear river, high mountain peaks, immensely tall oak trees, and abundant wildlife wooed two of them back. Efrain and Federico Chacon, brothers and poor farm workers, decided to return to the valley and homestead the land.
Starting with slash-and-burn farming, the brothers cut down trees to clear that land, brought in pigs and cows, and lived in a cave for two years. Finally, they were able to build a shack and bring their families to live in the valley with them (Efrain and Federico had married two sisters, Caridad and Claudina, and both couples had 11 children). For many years, the two families and the small community that joined them lived without electricity or modern comforts, but gradually Efrain developed a number of enterprises, including a prize dairy herd, trout farm, and apple orchard on the mountain slopes.
In 1982, Dr. Leo Finkenbinder, a biology professor from Southern Nazarene University (SNU) in Oklahoma, led a group of students to the valley for an 18-day field trip, beginning an association with the Chacon family that is still bearing fruit today. Partly as a result of this visit, Efrain decided to sell off the dairy cattle and convert to ecotourism activities, including a lodge and birdwatching tours. Leo returned regularly with students, and in 1988 Efrain agreed to support SNU research students, beginning a research tradition that has lasted to this day. A partnership brought an environmental study abroad program to the valley and students started giving science talks to the local community in Spanish.
“The forest is there only because I had an axe.”
In 1994, Leo and his wife, Zana, built a small, spartan laboratory for students with a tin roof that was called the Quetzal Education Research Center (QERC). Subsequently, in 2001 QERC built a beautiful 2-story biological field station that has been home to the QERC semester abroad program ever since. Before his passing, Efrain said he was grateful to God that he did not have a chainsaw when he started clearing the forest “because by the time I would have realized the importance of the forest, it would have disappeared. The forest is there only because I had an axe.”
With the completion of the QERC station, SNU students began arriving each year to participate in a curriculum that engaged them in courses, field trips, and research projects from a Christian worldview. Point Loma Nazarene University became involved when the QERC semester was opened up to other Christian universities, and Dr. David Cummings and Dr. Mike Mooring began teaching modules (Fungi and Mammalogy) in the spring. Meanwhile, PLNU offered its first Neotropical ecology field course in 2009, with an important component hosted at QERC. The following year, Mooring and his students began their Costa Rica large mammal summer research, with their headquarters at QERC. Today, these programs continue and the QERC Semester is more popular than ever. During the 2026 spring semester, half of the QERC students were from PLNU. Coco Barber, Jaxon DeBoef, Izzy Tocci, and Olivia Williams had an amazing ‘pura vida’ experience that they share in the following pages.
