Colinas

About Colinas:

Colinas covers just under 129 square kilometres of broken hill country in the west of Buenos Aires canton. The official average elevation is 340 metres, but that figure hides a lot of climbing, and some farms on the ridges sit above 700. Two national routes cross the district: Route 625, which runs through Guagaral, Colinas and Maíz de los Uva, and Route 331, a tertiary road of a little over eight kilometres that crosses the canton line to Pejibaye in Pérez Zeledón. Guagaral has three ways in: up from Térraba, through Las Juntas de Pacuar off the road between Pérez Zeledón and Buenos Aires, or over from Pejibaye. Jalisco, at the other end, looks out from the hills toward Palmar Norte and Puerto Cortés.

This is cattle country. Most of the land is pasture, and when a farm comes up for sale it is measured in dozens or hundreds of hectares. Inder, the rural development institute, has funded cattle projects for producer families in Colinas and neighbouring Boruca, and the current work on Route 625 is meant above all to make it easier to move crops and cattle out. Village life is organised around the schools: the larger villages each have their own primary school, and the Liceo Rural Maíz de los Uva takes the district’s secondary students. For the town hall and most paperwork, people go into Buenos Aires.

The name is honest. The district is a run of ridges and small valleys cut by streams, and a good finca can have more than a dozen springs; one 150-hectare cattle farm has fifteen, and a river rises on it. From the higher pastures the view runs to the Talamanca range and La Amistad International Park. Those same hills are why the road decides so much. Route 625 between Guagaral and Colinas is still gravel, dusty when it is dry and slow when it rains, and the tracks into individual farms are often four-wheel-drive only, so drive the land in the wet season before you settle on a price.

Colinas is small and has been shrinking. It had 1,757 residents in 1984 and 1,371 at the 2011 census, spread over some twenty hamlets from Aguas Frescas and Bajo Dioses to Nubes and Lajas. Most of the people who stay are cattle and farming families, and land often changes hands between neighbours, owner to owner. Outside buyers tend to be ranchers adding pasture, or people after a big finca with water and a view of La Amistad, sometimes with rural tourism in mind. Part of the district, though, lies inside the Boruca indigenous territory, and that land is not on the open market at all.

Farms and Land in Colinas:

Most of what sells here is a working cattle farm. A typical finca for sale in Colinas has rolling, improved pasture, a corral, a house for the farmhand, a stand of primary forest and water from its own springs, with power and water already connected. The larger holdings run to 150 hectares or more with over a kilometre of frontage on a public road, and some climb past 700 metres, where the air is cooler and the outlook opens toward the park. Smaller hill parcels also come up, sometimes with nothing more than a storage shed with a kitchen, for buyers who want to build their own place. Springs are the asset everyone talks about, but each permanent spring carries a protected radius under the Forestry Law and forest cover cannot be cleared, so set the price against the pasture you can reach and graze rather than against the headline hectares.

FAQ:

• Can I buy land in Maíz de Boruca or elsewhere in the Boruca territory?

  Not as a non-indigenous buyer. Maíz de Boruca, along with nearby communities such as Cedral and part of Ojo de Agua, lies within the Boruca indigenous territory, and under the Indigenous Law land there cannot pass to non-indigenous owners, whatever papers a seller shows you. Because the territory boundary runs through Colinas, have your lawyer pull the folio real from the Registro Nacional (Registro Inmobiliario) and lay the plano catastrado over the territory limits before you sign. If the land is clear of the territory, confirm that the seller is the registered owner and that the area on the plano matches the fences on the ground.

• How do I get to Colinas?

  Two national routes serve the district. Route 625 runs through Guagaral, Colinas and Maíz de los Uva, and Route 331 connects Colinas with Pejibaye in Pérez Zeledón. Guagaral can also be reached from Térraba, or through Las Juntas de Pacuar off the road between Pérez Zeledón and Buenos Aires. Ask the seller which way they come in during the rainy season, because it is not always the shortest one.

• Is the road between Guagaral and Colinas being improved?

  Yes. MOPT has work under way on 9.7 kilometres of Route 625 between Guagaral and Colinas, the stretch that is still gravel. The job covers drainage, gutters, shoulders and slopes, and finishes with an asphalt seal laid over the gravel; it is scheduled to run until December 2026, with controlled one-lane passage while crews work. The lanes that lead off the route to individual farms are not part of it.

• What happened to the Diquís dam project?

  ICE shut down the El Diquís hydroelectric project in November 2018, and the dam was never built. Its plans had included a new national road around the reservoir, running through Térraba, Colinas and Guagaral to the Pacuar junction in Pérez Zeledón. ICE has since said the project could be looked at again one day, but it has not taken it up. If an older document or a seller brings it up, ask your lawyer whether any easement or restriction linked to it was ever recorded against the property.

• Where do children go to school in Colinas?

  Primary schools are spread across the villages, among them Guagaral, Jalisco, San Luis, La Virgen, Los Ángeles, Mayal and the two Maíz communities. Secondary students go to the Liceo Rural Maíz de los Uva, about two kilometres west of the Catholic church of Colinas. If you plan to live on the farm with children, measure the distance to the nearest school by road and find out whether that road stays passable in the wet months.