The foursome caught my attention, particularly the boy with the red soccer ball and his inscrutable expression. Behind the children there is a cluster of well fed, expensively equipped tourists (I do not exempt myself from that description!) One of my Flickr contacts observed that three of the children are barefoot. True, but I don't think they lacked shoes, rather, I think they shucked them off the way kids are prone to do.
The houses are very modest, usually with a riotous tangle of wires in one corner connected to a nearby utility pole. Almost everyone has a rank overstuffed sofa on the front porch, or in the yard, curious because of the almost daily rainfall. Everyone has laundry (ostensibly drying) draped over anything horizontal. I marveled at the near futility of this chore and wondered how anything could dry in such thick humidity. Incredibly, given Costa Rica's climate, children were always neat and clean.
Tortuguero was one of the few places where we had time to walk about and explore a village, tiny as it is. The shops exist for visitors who come to see the nesting green sea turtles. Some village offerings are inexpensive handicrafts, vendors selling coconut water in the shell and a rambling bar by the canal selling very welcome ice cold beer
It was late in the afternoon when we arrived and families were gathered in a small park by the water. The interaction between parents and children made a deep impression and I thought of the isolation in many U.S. families from over extended lives with too little free time and the abundance of television, cell phones, pods, pads and internet that presumably connect us.
There were colorful clusters of people everywhere and always an assortment of appealing dogs.
A young mother with large red earrings and a small infant on a bright blue bench.
This lovely woman grooming her daughter, framed by bamboo at the water's edge, is one of my favorite photos from our trip.
Shadows deepened creating a silhouette of family ties in Tortuguero.
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