A pair of caimans sit confidently on their mother’s back in the cool waters of the Indio Maiz Reserve near El Castillo, Nicaragua. I’ve written extensively about Crocodilians already, but I continually find myself drawn back to them; after all, they are what started all of this for me. In the grey, rainy days of the winter of 2014, my brother and I were boarded up inside our dorm room on our college campus and avoiding all the essays we were supposed to be composing with a procession of crocodile documentaries. As the hours went on we began to grow increasingly distressed about the amount of crocodiles we were dealing with on a daily basis (at that time: none). That was no way to live, we were convinced. Jokingly, one of us suggested that we ought to go down to south Florida and try to find some good and feisty american crocodiles; we had tangled with alligators in the clear waters of Juniper and Alexander Springs, but we had never been far south enough to see a croc. The joke persisted, and eventually became a little less of a joke and a bit more of an ambition; the ambition turned in to an often-mumbled plot, which evolved into a decidedly grandiose and hairbrained scheme. We talked our registrar into letting us out of class in January so that we could put together an independent study that revolved around our search for american crocodiles in the grassy rivers of the everglades. This first amateur, sometimes disastrous, always seat-of-our-pants expedition was the inspiration for what is now Adventure Term, a multi-disciplinary effort to prepare and lead small student groups on crazy expeditions of their own. With a purpose bent always toward conservation, research, and education, Adventure Term hopes to equip the next generation of teachers, conservationists, and journalists with real world in-the-field experience— and to keep the spirit of adventure alive and kicking. At its best, the fruits of our efforts with Adventure Term will contribute to the conservation efforts working to protect the endangered species and besieged habitats of the world; like the Indio Maiz Reserve in Nicaragua, home to the spectacled caimans photographed above.