

Rural Ticos live a family centered life in very close knit communities. Each evening the community center has a party with music and laughter we can hear from our balcony.
Just a few hundred meters off the main road and it looks like it must have 100 years ago. Clap-board and corrugated metal homes and many generations live on the same driveway. Their yards are kept with pride…pretty flowering hedges outline their property…free running chickens…turkeys…pigs in a pen…and fruit trees. Lots of fruit trees! 🙂 Beauty and bounty grow easily in the climate with a little TLC.
Very few people own cars in rural Costa Rica. Ticos walk everywhere…to the bus stop, work or church.
Daily we see people who walk 7 kilometers to the bus and back along our road. Lots of people use a bicycle to get around. We often see Dads or Mom’s with a kid dressed in their school uniforms riding the handle bars on their way to school in the mornings. Some families have a motorcycle and balance everyone on including the dog to go to town (no joke!). It’s another post altogether to talk about the crazy things we have seen loaded on motorcycles..ladders, pulling wheelbarrows like trailers, even a toilet once!)

Our next door neighbors seem to have this life. Federico’s multi-generational family live together on about a half acre. In the evening I always hear laughter of the young cousins horsing around. In the mornings I hear their chickens scratching in the lot below. As I walk by their gate I get a smile and a friendly “hola” and maybe even a short conversation.

A few weeks ago we were invited to get some grapefruit from a friend’s neighbor. You can’t find grapefruit in the stores here and I love love love grapefruit. Well, I was like a kid on a field trip, picking up this grapefruit. We parked at a gate which was on a very steep dirt road and no houses were in sight. We passed through the gate and walked half a mile and finally to a walking path that led to their home.

He climbed these 40′ trees with a home made ladder in his bare feet to pick the grapefruit! He filled a giant feed bag with grapefruit 4 times. Amazing!
the sweetest grapefruit I have ever tasted. What a treat!
