La Cruz

About La Cruz:

La Cruz is the first of the canton’s four districts, postal code 51001, and the most populous of them. The Interamericana runs straight through it, with Liberia about 60 kilometres to the south and the Peñas Blancas border post some 20 kilometres north of town. Route 4 also starts here, heading east to Santa Cecilia, Upala and San Carlos, and Daniel Oduber airport in Liberia is roughly an hour away by car. From town, local roads drop down to the coast: Soley and Puerto Soley, Playa Copal and Papaturro, Rajada up toward the border, and El Jobo and Manzanillo on the southern shore of the bay.

The town is where the canton comes to get things done. It has the municipality, the CCSS clinic on the Interamericana, the bus terminal, the Liceo La Cruz, and the shops and pharmacies that the farming districts to the east rely on. The border is the other engine: in 2025 a new border control centre opened at Peñas Blancas, with cargo inspection yards, customs agencies, logistics and transport firms and a row of sodas around it. Out on the bay, fishing families in Soley and Puerto Soley share the coast with kite schools, small hotels and the JW Marriott Costa Elena resort at Playa El Jobo.

The name comes from the cattle drives. Drovers taking herds from Nicaragua down to Esparza used to cross this ridge, and when one of them died chasing a runaway steer, his companions marked the grave with a cross of rough logs; the spot became the place to rest and count the cattle, and a village grew around it. The land is still dry forest and pasture, with the Área de Conservación Guanacaste close by and Isla Bolaños, a refuge where frigatebirds and brown pelicans nest, sitting in the middle of the bay. From roughly November to April the wind blows hard and steady across flat water. That wind is what brings the kitesurfers, and it is also why a house on an exposed ridge or headland here needs a sheltered terrace and a roof built to take the gusts.

Most residents are Costa Rican families who make their living from the town, the border, the farms and the sea, in a canton whose first ranchers came over from Rivas, in Nicaragua, in the second half of the 1800s. Lots in and around town are usually priced in colones and pitched at local buyers. Coastal land is mostly marketed in dollars, to people drawn by the kitesurfing, to anyone after a holiday house with a view, and to investors and developers looking at long stretches of shore with very little built on them. That makes two markets inside one district, and it pays to know which one you are shopping in.

Land and Lots in La Cruz:

In town, lots come up in the barrios and along the main streets: residential plots of a few hundred square metres, some looking out over the bay from the edge of the ridge, and lots sold for either housing or business. Toward the coast the plots get bigger, from ocean-view parcels of several thousand square metres above Bahía Salinas to lots a short walk from the public beach at Playa Copal. If you are comparing lots for sale in La Cruz, ask the municipality first whether the plot falls under one of the coastal regulatory plans, because that decides what can be built and how. Then get the water supply confirmed in writing before you fall for the view.

Houses in La Cruz:

Most houses are concrete family homes in barrios such as Fátima, Corazón de Jesús and Santa Rosa, and the ones in the centre are a short walk from the shops and schools. Some of them, even in the middle of town, look out over the bay, and those sell on the view as much as on the house. Near Soley, houses come on bigger plots of a few thousand square metres. A house for sale in La Cruz near the centre suits someone who works in town or at the border; one out by the bay is a different purchase, where the access road counts for as much as the rooms.

Rentals in La Cruz:

Long-term rentals are mostly modest houses in the town’s barrios, usually two bedrooms, a living and dining room, a kitchen and parking for one car. On the bay, houses with terraces over the water are let to visitors, many of them here for the wind.

Large Coastal Tracts in La Cruz:

The coast of the district also sells in very large pieces. There are titled properties of several hectares with their own beach frontage at Papaturro, tracts of more than 50 hectares at El Jobo and Playa Manzanillo, and holdings of several hundred hectares on Bahía Salinas offered as development land. These are projects rather than homes. The questions to settle are the coastal plan, the maritime zone, water, power and the road, in that order, and no asking price means much until a surveyor and a lawyer have been over the land.

FAQ:

• Does a listing marked “La Cruz, Guanacaste” mean this district?

  Not always. La Cruz is also the name of the canton, so the same label gets used for property in Santa Cecilia, La Garita and Santa Elena, where Cuajiniquil is. This district is the town, the Peñas Blancas border area and the Bahía Salinas coast, postal code 51001. The cadastral plan names the district, and that is the one that counts.

• How far is La Cruz from Liberia and the border?

  The town is about 60 kilometres north of Liberia on the Interamericana, under an hour’s drive, and Peñas Blancas is around 20 kilometres further north. Buses leave the La Cruz terminal for Liberia and San José. If you are flying in, the nearest airport is Daniel Oduber in Liberia.

• Can I buy beachfront on Bahía Salinas?

  Usually not as private property. The 200 metres inland from the high-tide line are maritime-terrestrial zone: the first 50 are public, and the other 150 can only be held as a municipal concession where a coastal regulatory plan is in force. In this district there are plans for Puerto Soley, Playa Copal and Papaturro, and Playa El Jobo, while the one for Playa Rajada is still under review, so a concession there cannot be counted on yet. Concessions also carry limits for foreign buyers, and the few titled properties that run down to the sand are exceptions whose title deserves a closer look than any other.

• What should I check before buying near Peñas Blancas or the north of the bay?

  Start with the border itself. The northern shore of Bahía Salinas runs right up to the line with Nicaragua, and the two-kilometre strip alongside the frontier is, as a rule, state land rather than private titled property, so a parcel up there may be held by permit or by old possession rather than by clean title. Get a registry report from the Registro Nacional (Registro Inmobiliario), measure the distance to the border on the cadastral plan, and ask the Municipalidad de La Cruz for the land-use certificate before you hand over any deposit.

• What is it like to live with the wind in La Cruz?

  For kitesurfers it is the reason to be here. From about November to April it blows strong, and it lifts dust off the gravel roads, so a house in an exposed spot needs windows and a roof that can take it and a sheltered corner to sit outside. In the rainy months the wind drops, but some of the roads down to the beaches are unpaved and a car with good clearance makes life easier.