San Antonio

About San Antonio:

San Antonio is the third district of Nicoya and the biggest in the canton, at close to 340 square kilometres, larger even than the central district around the city. More than thirty villages are scattered across it, among them San Antonio itself, Corralillo, Puerto Humo, San Lázaro, Rosario, Talolinga, La Florida, Pozas, Corral de Piedra, Monte Galán, Zapote and Piedras Blancas. Route 150 leaves Nicoya heading north-west, reaches the Cruce de San Antonio after nine kilometres and carries on through La Florida toward San Lázaro. Corralillo sits just off that road, 14 kilometres from the city. Puerto Humo, on the Tempisque, is about 25 kilometres out, and the gravel road to Corral de Piedra runs 21 kilometres north of Nicoya, or eight kilometres west from the Puente La Amistad. Six more national routes, including the 905, 906 and 907, tie the villages together, and the district shares a boundary with Santa Cruz canton.

This is farm country. Corralillo has around 350 homes, and most of its families live from crops and cattle; maize has been grown here since the Chorotega milpas, and the older women still cook tortillas on wood-fired stoves before dawn. Every July, during the fiestas for the Anexión del Partido de Nicoya, the village’s technical high school, the Colegio Técnico Profesional de Corralillo, is the centre of the Festival de la Tortilla, held since 2000 and big enough to draw thousands of visitors a day. Puerto Humo grew up on the river instead. In the 1800s its landing traded by boat with Puntarenas, an old company store built by a family of Chinese origin still stands from those years, and fishing kept the village going once that trade faded. Today its boatmen take visitors up the Tempisque to see crocodiles and waterbirds, and Palo Verde National Park can be entered by water from here. For the hospital, the banks and the big supermarkets, everyone drives into Nicoya.

East of the villages the ground flattens into the Tempisque floodplain, and two protected wetlands take up a large share of it. The Mata Redonda wildlife refuge, near Rosario and San Lázaro, was waste ground that ranchers treated as common pasture in the dry season until it was declared public domain in 1972; it became a refuge in 1994 and joined the Palo Verde Ramsar site in 2002. The Corral de Piedra wetland, 2,281 hectares of freshwater lagoons fed by the Tempisque, works differently: most of it is private cattle land, protected by the state because it floods. It soaks up the river’s high water in the wet season, which spares the villages nearby, and it links the forests of Barra Honda and Palo Verde for wildlife. West of the wetlands the land rises to low hills such as Cerro Corral de Piedra, at 310 metres, and Corralillo backs onto Barra Honda National Park. Water is the constant here. In a hard rainy season, communities near the river can be cut off for days, and downpours have flooded streets in Corralillo and stream crossings in San Antonio itself.

Most residents come from Guanacastecan families who have worked this land for generations. Alongside them are people who earn their living in Nicoya and want a house within a short drive of it. Outside buyers fall into two camps. Ranchers and agricultural investors want flat lowland with a well and road frontage, and a smaller group is looking for a farm with a river, a forest edge or a view of the wetlands, sometimes with a lodge or nature tours in mind, of the kind already running at Puerto Humo and Corral de Piedra.

Farms and Ranches in San Antonio:

Large farms are the heart of this market. In the lowlands around San Lázaro, completely flat holdings of 70 to 80 hectares come up with improved pasture, a deep well and power, pitched at buyers who want to plant rice or fatten cattle; at least one sits right against Mata Redonda. Around Corralillo the farms run to forty-odd hectares of semi-flat ground with a freshwater river, community water and electricity, and wide frontage on a public road, while others reach up to the slopes of Cerro Caballito, a quarter of an hour from Nicoya. Near Puerto Humo, holdings of three to eight hectares sit between the village and the river. When you look at farms for sale in San Antonio, find out where the property stands against the wetland boundaries before you think about what to plant or build.

Land and Lots in San Antonio:

Closer to the villages, larger farms are being divided into smaller pieces. In Corralillo, lots from 1,000 square metres up are sold ready to build, with residential or tourism use allowed, and parcels of three-quarters of a hectare change hands along the roads out of the village. Lots also turn up in San Antonio itself and beside Route 150, where buses and the drive to Nicoya are easy. Height decides a lot of value here: a plot a metre or two above the next one may stay dry in October while its neighbour stands in water. Walk any lot for sale in Corralillo or San Antonio after a heavy storm, not only on a sunny day in March.

Houses in San Antonio:

Most homes are family houses in the village centres, on lots with fruit trees and room for a car or two. Larger rural houses come up as well, such as a five-bedroom home of more than 600 square metres in San Antonio sold as an investment, and farmhouses that change hands with a few hectares of pasture. Near the Cruce de Corralillo, a finca of almost three hectares with a large house has been offered for sale or for rent, which gives a sense of how flexible owners can be. The Nicoya Peninsula is earthquake country, so have an engineer look over the frame and roof of any older house before you sign.

FAQ:

• Which San Antonio is this?

  Costa Rica has many districts called San Antonio, from Belén in Heredia to Puriscal and León Cortés. This one is the third district of Nicoya canton in Guanacaste, postal code 50203, north-west of the city of Nicoya. On a deed or cadastral plan, look for canton Nicoya, district San Antonio, and you have the right place.

• How do I know whether a farm here is inside a protected wetland?

  Ask before anything else, because much of the Corral de Piedra wetland is private land that the state protects, and Mata Redonda has been public domain since 1972, after decades as shared dry-season pasture. Fences drawn in the old grazing days do not always match the official limits. Get the property study and cadastral plan from the Registro Nacional (Registro Inmobiliario), have a surveyor compare them with the refuge and wetland boundaries held by the Área de Conservación Tempisque, and ask the Municipalidad de Nicoya for a land-use certificate before you pay a deposit.

• Does it flood in San Antonio?

  In parts, yes. The lowland villages near the Tempisque can be cut off for days in a bad rainy season, and heavy rain has flooded streets and crossings in Corralillo and San Antonio. Ask neighbours how high the water reached in the worst year they remember, look at the road in October, and site any house on the highest ground the lot has.

• A seller says the farm will get water from the new irrigation canal. Should I count on it?

  Not yet. PAACUME, the government’s Agua para la Bajura project, is meant to bring irrigation and drinking water to the right bank of the Tempisque, in Carrillo, Santa Cruz and Nicoya, but SENARA has been weighing whether to shorten the West Canal. Until the canal and its connections exist, price a farm on the well and water rights it has today, and ask SENARA directly what is planned for that area.

• How long does it take to reach Nicoya and the river?

  The Cruce de San Antonio is nine kilometres up Route 150 from Nicoya, and Corralillo is another short turn off that road. Puerto Humo is about 25 kilometres from the city, where the river tours leave for the Tempisque and Palo Verde. The hospital, banks, government offices and larger shops are all in Nicoya.