AE Member available in Belén, Cariari & San Joaquin:

• Go Dutch Realty, Shell Johanson

Belen/Cariari/San Joaquin: Costa Rican style of living in Heredia

Cariari is a suburb of the sleepy town of Belen, located about mid-way between the main international airport and the capital, San Jose, or some fifteen minutes either way by car.

As suburbs go, it is very much like any suburban development in the US, just doctored to fit the Costa Rican style of living. There are some thousand plots of land within its enclave with a bit more than half of those with homes on them.

The homes are quite homogeneous in that there are no slums anywhere, only fine homes for middle, upper middle and luxury range. Cariari was conceived some 35 years ago from lands that were coffee farms. At the time, a small group of businessmen decided to build a golf course and hired the well-known Tom Facio to build what is now the ‘Cariari Golf and Country Club’. The result, for all to see, is a gorgeous, mature golf course that will challenge the most skilled player. It is still, after all these years, arguably the best golf course in Central America.

The municipality of Belen, of which Cariari is a part, has been chosen by the largest national paper ‘La Nacion’ as the best run municipality for three years running.

The roads are good and cleaned with frequency, the water plentiful, the garbage picked up regularly - in short, a well-run place. Also, Asuncion, a small district of Cariari itself, was chosen in 2008 as the best community to live in Costa Rica!

It beat out some other fine places such as Escazu and Santa Ana. Belen is a quaint little place of some 20,000 inhabitants. Although it is growing fast, it still retains that Costa Rican small town flavor, charm and pleasantness.

In spite of its tiny size, it has plenty of fine eateries ranging from Chinese to Cuban to Persian cuisine. Small shops and large shopping centers abound and for those more exigent, the multi-level Cariari Mall has it all. Not only is Belen near the airport and the capital, but it is also close to the cities of Alajuela and Heredia, the next two largest places in Costa Rica, after San Jose.

It is no accident that Intel placed its new plant, with its 3000 employees, in its midst.