San Lorenzo

About San Lorenzo:

At just over 300 square kilometres, San Lorenzo is the largest district in San Ramón, and it covers the lowland country at the northern end of the canton. Valle Azul, the district seat, lies on Ruta 702 some 44 kilometres from San Ramón and about 25 from Ciudad Quesada, and La Fortuna is roughly forty minutes away by car. Just before Valle Azul the 702 crosses the Río San Lorenzo from Bajo Rodríguez, and from Bajo Rodríguez the 739 heads east to Florencia in San Carlos. On the other side of Valle Azul, the Río La Esperanza marks the line with La Tigra, also in San Carlos. That is why people here shop, study and see the doctor on both sides of the cantonal boundary.

The district was created by executive agreement on 30 August 2016 from the lowland half of Ángeles. Besides Valle Azul it takes in Bajo Rodríguez, Bajo Córdoba, Cataratas, Colonia Palmareña, Coopezamora, Criques, Kooper, Los Lagos, Las Rocas, Pueblo Nuevo and San Jorge. Valle Azul itself was once the Santa Clara hacienda; in 1970 the land settlement institute, then called ITCO, bought it and divided it into family parcels. Seven of the first families came from Valle Azul de Paquera, on the Nicoya Peninsula, and they brought the name with them. Today the village has a primary school and an academic high school, a health post opened in 1988, a hardware store, sodas, a concrete-block works and its football and basketball courts, and it celebrates San Martín every 3 November.

Farming still pays the bills: basic grains, roots and tubers, plantain, palmito, pineapple, citrus, beef cattle and timber. Nurseries matter more than their size suggests, and several growers in Valle Azul and Bajo Rodríguez, including one on Calle Las Pavas off the 739, are authorised to ship dracaena plants to the United States. The CNFL’s Daniel Gutiérrez hydro plant also draws on the Balsa and Cataratas rivers inside the district. To the south-west the land climbs into the Alberto Manuel Brenes Biological Reserve, 7,800 hectares of premontane forest run jointly by the state conservation system and the University of Costa Rica’s Sede de Occidente, home to a heliconia found almost nowhere else. Los Criques and Colonia Palmareña are the villages closest to its edge.

Most residents are farming families, many of them on parcels their parents or grandparents received when the settlements were laid out. Local buyers trade lots and modest houses among themselves, almost always in colones. Families from the Central Valley and from San Carlos look for quintas on flat land, where a house, a garden and a few fruit trees fit with room to spare. A smaller group buys productive farms, and a handful of owners let houses to visitors on their way to La Fortuna and Arenal.

Houses in San Lorenzo:

Houses here are mostly single-storey and built on more land than you would get in town. At the small end there are two-bedroom homes on lots of about 200 square metres in Bajo Rodríguez; in Valle Azul, family houses on flat plots of 500 square metres and more are common, and a few larger four-bedroom homes of over 200 square metres turn up. Some come with a couple of thousand square metres of garden. When you compare houses for sale in Valle Azul and Bajo Rodríguez, remember that the two villages are joined by a single bridge, and pick the side that suits your daily route.

Land and Lots in San Lorenzo:

Bajo Rodríguez has a steady supply of building lots of around 1,000 square metres with some 24 metres of frontage on the main road, usually with power and water available at the boundary and priced in colones. In Valle Azul the plots are bigger and flatter: quinta lots of 1,600 to 5,000 square metres, some already on their own cadastral plan. A lot in San Lorenzo de San Ramón that comes out of a recent segregation should have a municipal visado on the plan and front a public road, so ask for both before you leave a deposit. River frontage looks good on a listing, but the Forestry Law strip along every stream shrinks the area you can actually build on.

Fincas in San Lorenzo:

Farms are where San Lorenzo differs most from the rest of San Ramón. What comes up ranges from pasture for cattle to land already planted for export, such as a productive finca of 6.3 hectares in Valle Azul. Before you price one, walk it with someone who knows the crop, ask what is planted and who buys it, and find out whether the irrigation and the access road belong to the farm or depend on a neighbour. Near the reserve, have a surveyor confirm the boundary on the ground, because protected forest cannot be cleared or built on.

FAQ:

• Which San Lorenzo is this, and why do some papers still say Ángeles?

  This is San Lorenzo de San Ramón, in the northern lowlands of Alajuela, not the districts of the same name in Flores or Tarrazú. Until 2016 its villages belonged to Ángeles, so older survey plans, receipts and even sellers may still give that district. The registered property is what counts, so check the district on the cadastral plan and in the registry.

• What should I check on a parcel that came from the old Valle Azul settlement?

  Start with its origin, because much of Valle Azul was handed out as ITCO parcels from 1970 onward. Land granted by the agrarian institute, now INDER, can carry a registered limitation that blocks sale or subdivision without the institute’s consent. Ask your notary for a full title study at the Registro Nacional (Registro Inmobiliario), and make sure the boundaries on the plan match the fences you walked.

• How far is San Lorenzo from San Ramón, Ciudad Quesada and La Fortuna?

  From Valle Azul it is about 44 kilometres to San Ramón over the mountains on Ruta 702, and about 25 to Ciudad Quesada. La Fortuna is around forty minutes by car. Bajo Rodríguez also has the 739 east to Florencia, the quickest way into the San Carlos plains.

• Do the rivers ever cut the road?

  Yes. Heavy rain has damaged the approach to the bridge over the Río San Lorenzo and closed the 702 between Bajo Rodríguez and Valle Azul, and the 739 toward Florencia has also been closed at times. If you will commute or ship produce, ask neighbours how long past closures lasted and whether there is another way out from the property you are considering.

• Can I build close to a river or the biological reserve?

  Not inside the protected strip along rivers and springs, and not inside the reserve, which is protected by law. Land next to it can be bought and built on like any other parcel, provided the land use allows it. Request a land-use certificate from the Municipalidad de San Ramón before you commit, since San Lorenzo is handled there and not by the district council in Peñas Blancas.