Guaria de Osa’s Staff and Community

* Our Community at Guaria de Osa
* International Staff and Liaison
* Cultural Master

The Staff at Guaria de Osa

Jonathon Miller Weisberger

Jonathon is Guaria de Osa’s founder and steward. Jonathon, or Sparrow as his friends call him was born in Berkeley California and raised from a very young age in the country of Ecuador. Since 2000 he has been living 9 months a year in Costa Rica's Osa Peninsula overseeing all aspects of the construction of Guaria de Osa Centre. He is more than our “jefe” he is also Guaria’s principal rainforest guide, plant master, storyteller and much more!

He likes to consider himself a professional beach bum, but this is far from the truth, quite on the contrary, he is an intrepid and knowledgeable rainforest guide and ethnobotanist, with 15 years of ground level experience, having guided over 550 participants into remote regions of Ecuador, Peru and Costa Rica. He also practices and teaches: Tui Na massage, Foot reflexology, Tai Chi and Dao In (Taoist exercises for health), I Ching study, Herbology and is Guaria's on site Surf Instructor.

Jonathon is an enthusiastic storyteller who’s extensive and knowledgeable understanding of rainforest medicinal flora and indigenous life and world view is unique. He has collaborated as an ethnobotanist and as a rainforest conservation advocate, living for over 10 years (1990-2000) in the Upper Amazon among 5 distinct indigenous peoples communities and tribes.

Co-author of two ethnobotanical, bi-lingual educational books dedicated to indigenous youth in Amazonian Ecuador, Jonathon has published articles in Spanish and English. He has collected over 2500 herbarium specimens deposited in several herbariums in Ecuador and Peru. He has also collaborated on, initiated and overseen innovative rainforest conservation projects including the creation of biological reserves, de-colonization and the demarcation of indigenous territories, buffer zones around national parks, ancestral lands reclamation and cultural heritage revival. He has been influential in saving thousands of hectares of rainforest lands primarily in Ecuador on behalf of the projects.

Click photo to enlarge

Monica Serrano

Guaria's Kitchen and Housekeeping Staff

Ladna Miller Weisberger

Ladna is completing her degree in applied Ecology/Biology at La Universidad de San Francisco in Quito, Ecuador. She is Guaria de Osa's assistant International Liaison and, about 2 - 3 times a year, she comes to Guaria de Osa to work with her brother, Jonathon, to be our rainforest and ocean field guide.

Her skills and passions also include scuba diving, rainforest ecology, photography, and she is an avid practitioner of Capoeira. Since 1995 Ladna has been an active member of our ground level rainforest conservation projects and in 2002 became project coordinator for Grupo Osanimi’s Rainforest Conservation and Cultural Heritage Projects in the Ecuadorian Amazonian and Andes. Please read: Council for Cultural and Biological Diversity.

Please contact Ladna at for donations to our ground-level Rainforest Conservation projects in the Ecuadorian Amazon and Andes and our Marine Turtle Rescue project on the Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica. Ladna is also the contact person for Volunteers interested in service at Guaria de Osa. More info at: www.4biodiversity.org

Dahlia Kresch Miller

Dahlia, born and raised in Panama [as Esther Miller] by Polish immigrants, has spent most of her life in Latin America. She lived in Ecuador from 1968 – 1985 where she raised two graceful children. Her daughter Ladna Yanara is an ecologist/biologist, coordinator of Grupo Osanimi's Rainforest Conservation and Cultural Heritage Projects in Ecuador, a photographer and an avid practitioner of Capoeira. Her son, Jonathon Sparrow is an ethnobotanist, founder and steward of Guaria de Osa, the director of Grupo Osanimi & The Council for Cultural and Biological Diversity, photographer, an avid practitioner of Chinese Medicine and its philosophy and Martial Arts.

While raising her family in Ecuador, Dahlia taught high school in Quito. In her home, she gave piano lessons and taught vegetarian cooking classes (an original concept in those days in Ecuador). In 1974, with Gilad Zamir from Kibbutz Ein Dor in Israel, Dahlia co-founded "Hojas de Hierba" a cultural centre named after Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass." She programmed live cultural and educational events like Ecuador had not seen before, alongside a restaurant that served the first vegetarian dishes in Ecuador, together with other 'firsts' in this beloved country of hers.

Dahlia is a founding member of Guaria de Osa since its beginning in 2001 and is Sentient Experientials' international Liaison. She studied piano at Juilliard Conservatory of Music in New York, received her Masters Degree in the Interdisciplinary Studies of Consciousness at John F. Kennedy University in California and began a Ph.D. degree in Social and Cultural Anthropology at the California Institute of Integral Studies – with a focus on Living Systems Theory. Dahlia turns her personal, professional, and passionate attention to the wellbeing and lessons of the Rainforest and her gardeners and stewards.

Note on boat captains: Guaria de Osa contracts all ocean bound voyages and transfers to and from the lodge to local boat captains, such as Olman and others like Asdrual Mora and occasionally the boats from other neighboring lodges. So you may meet other boat captains, though Olman is our main captain.

Guaria de Osa's 'jack-of-all-trades' beach boys

Cultural Master:
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don Pablo Amaringo

don Pablo Amaringo, a legendary, world-class Amazonian painter from Peru and Director of the USKO AYAR School of Amazonian Painting in Pucallpa, whose paintings are featured in the book Ayahuasca Visions, The Religious Iconography of a Peruvian Shaman, of which he is co-author. In 1992, he was elected to the Global 500 Roll of Honor of the United Nations Environment Program in recognition of his work to protect and improve the environment through the USKO-AYAR school. Pablo Amaringo was a teacher-in-residence at Guaria de Osa EcoLodge for several years beginning in 2003. Click here for Pablo Amaringo Paintings

Fulfilling don Pablo's wish, all profits of the sales of prints from his original paintings go to Rainforest Conservation projects in the Amazon.

His spirit rides in the wind
and flows with the rivers
all over the world.
1943 - November 16, 2009
Pucallpa, Perú

don Victorio Villareal Villareal “Cascarilla”

don Victorio is a Costa Rican (Tico) native, an Herbologist and Natural healer. From time to time, he comes to Guaria toÊlead shorter nature walks, identifies the local medicinal and useful plants, distinguishes the birds, spots well-camouflaged creatures, and shares his insightful knowledge of plants and pre-Columbian archeology. don Victorio's other gifts, talents, and passions include plant healing, story-telling of the region, predicting the weather and serenading Latin American guitar music of yester-yore and challengimg you to an unforgettable game of dominoes!

Pestañas / “Eyebrows” and Ana

Pestañas, one of our horses, and Ana, scarlet macaw, are part of our community.

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