La Garita

About La Garita:

La Garita is the third of La Cruz’s four districts, postal code 51003, and lies east of the canton seat in Costa Rica’s far north-west. National Route 4 crosses it on the way from La Cruz to Santa Cecilia and then carries on toward Upala and San Carlos, so the district sits on the road that ties north Guanacaste to the northern plains. The district centre has an EBAIS clinic and a CEN-CINAI child-care centre. For paperwork, the bus station and bigger shopping, people drive to La Cruz, where the Inter-American Highway runs north to the Peñas Blancas border post and south to Liberia and its Daniel Oduber airport.

Cattle and crops pay the bills. The bigger farms run herds on open pasture, the smaller ones grow beans, fruit and other crops, and the Ministry of Agriculture’s regional office in La Cruz holds field days for local producers. Next door in Santa Cecilia, the orange groves of Del Oro are one of the main employers in this part of the canton, and the company takes on far more workers when the citrus harvest comes in. Schools in Andes, Inocentes and the settlements of San Fernando and El Gallo serve the hamlets. The La Garita development association runs the fiestas, with bull-riding nights where Costa Rican riders take on Nicaraguan ones, and a Christmas festival together with the municipality.

The district averages 300 metres above sea level, low rolling ground that rises to the south-east toward the Orosí volcano. The slopes of Orosí and its neighbour Cacao are protected as Guanacaste National Park, part of the Área de Conservación Guanacaste World Heritage Site, and Hacienda Los Inocentes, a farm near Laguna Guayabal that also takes guests, sits close under the volcano. Up here the dry season is long, and it is the dry season that sets the value of a finca: one with a creek, a spring or a reliable water connection is a different proposition from one that dries out in March. Many hamlets are reached on gravel roads, which the municipality has been regrading and fitting with new drainage.

Most people in La Garita come from ranching and farming families, and many others work on the farms and citrus plantations around them. Buyers from outside the district are mostly after land: ranchers adding pasture, people starting a crop or livestock project, and investors who want frontage on the paved road between La Cruz and Santa Cecilia. A smaller group wants a country house with room around it, within reach of La Cruz town and of the canton’s own coast at Bahía Salinas and Junquillal. It is quiet, working country, and that is the point for the people who buy here.

Land and Lots in La Garita:

Smaller parcels turn up in and around the district centre and the hamlets: lots of a few thousand square metres with water, electricity and a decent run of road frontage, some with a simple cabin already standing. In barrio Paraíso there is land that suits farming, cattle or a house equally well. If you are weighing land for sale in La Garita, ask the Municipalidad de La Cruz for the land-use certificate before you agree a price. Then check that the frontage drawn on the cadastral plan matches the road you can actually drive on.

Farms and Ranches in La Garita:

Fincas are the core of this market. They run from a dozen hectares with a creek, fruit trees, water and power up to properties of thirty to fifty hectares on the asphalted public road, sold for cattle or crops and sometimes with a warehouse already built. A few come from the banks’ repossessed-property lists. The end of the dry season is the honest time to see one, because that is when you find out which creeks still run.

Houses in La Garita:

Homes here are mainly family houses in the district centre and the hamlets, along with farmhouses sold together with their land. Now and then a larger, newer home appears, such as a two-storey house with a pool on its own plot. Buying a house in La Garita nearly always means buying the ground around it too, so the water, the access and the boundaries matter as much as the state of the house.

FAQ:

• Is this the La Garita near Alajuela, or the one near Tamarindo?

  Neither. Garita in Alajuela is a district in the Central Valley, and La Garita Nueva is a village in Santa Cruz canton near Tamarindo. This La Garita is district 51003 of La Cruz canton, in the far north of Guanacaste. A plan or registry record for a property here reads Guanacaste, La Cruz, La Garita, and anything else is a different place.

• How do I get to La Garita?

  From La Cruz, take National Route 4 east toward Santa Cecilia; the road runs straight through the district. La Cruz itself is on the Inter-American Highway, south of the Peñas Blancas border crossing and north of Liberia. The closest airport is Daniel Oduber in Liberia.

• What should I check on the title of a finca in La Garita?

  Start with where the land came from. The district includes state land-reform settlements such as San Fernando and El Gallo, and a parcel first allocated by the old IDA, now INDER, can carry limitations on its sale written into the record. Pull the property at the Registro Nacional (Registro Inmobiliario), read every annotation, and if the parcel came from a settlement, ask INDER whether the sale needs its authorisation. After that, compare the cadastral plan with the fences on the ground and get the land-use certificate from the Municipalidad de La Cruz.

• Can foreigners buy land in La Garita?

  Yes, with one caveat that comes with being this far north. Costa Rican law gives foreign buyers the same ownership rights as nationals, and La Garita has no coastline, so there is no maritime-zone concession to deal with. The caveat is the frontier: the two-kilometre strip along the border with Nicaragua is state land and cannot be bought as ordinary titled property. On any parcel toward the north of the canton, confirm on the cadastral plan that it lies outside that strip, and let a Costa Rican lawyer advise on whether to buy in your own name or through a company.

• What makes a finca in La Garita work for cattle?

  Water, before anything else. You want a creek or spring that still flows at the end of the dry season, a water connection for the house and electricity on the property. Frontage on Route 4 or another asphalted road makes moving cattle and feed far easier than a gravel track in the rains. Pasture in good condition in April is worth more than any description of it in December.