Cirí Grande

About Cirí Grande:

Cirí Grande takes up the western edge of Capira district. El Cacao, Cirí de Los Sotos and La Trinidad lie to the east, and to the west the Río Indio and its headwater streams mark the line with Penonomé district in Coclé. From Capira town on the Interamericana the road climbs through Lídice and El Cacao and carries on into the corregimiento, and local buses connect Ciricito with Capira. Away from that main route the hamlets hang off earth tracks, and the river crossings are the weak link: a flood on the Río Cirí Grande has already carried away one of the fords. Jordanal, high on the western rim, is a separate trip, closer to El Valle de Antón than to anything in Capira and reached from that side.

Coffee pays most of the bills. Since the early 2010s the Canal and the agriculture ministry have pushed improved lowland robusta across the Cirí Grande and Trinidad valleys, and by 2022 some 1,700 growers were working about 2,000 hectares of it. Ciricito is where that economy meets, and the official launch of the robusta harvest has been held at the Unión Campesina Capireña’s premises there. Around the coffee you will see Persian lime, pineapple and plantain, plus small cattle herds. At La Bonga Centro the ministry has built drinking troughs for smallholders’ livestock.

Water runs through everything here, in two directions. Most of the corregimiento drains into the Río Cirí Grande and on into the Canal watershed, which is why the Canal Authority is a constant presence: it pays landowners to protect forest, measures forest cover farm by farm and runs family-farming programmes in the hamlets. The western settlements, Río Indio Nacimiento, Río Indio Centro and Río Indio de Los Chorros, sit on the upper Río Indio near its source below Cerro Gaital. Further down that river, in its middle reach, the Canal plans a reservoir of about 4,600 hectares, a project the state has declared of public interest. The land also rises from east to west, from valley farms at around 250 metres at La Bonga to cloud forest at 1,000 metres around Jordanal, where the damp decides how you build.

Most people here live off their own fincas, and the hamlets are small, most of them between a dozen and sixty households. The school is the centre of each community, and when the health ministry sends a mobile team out, as it did to the El Jordanal school, several hundred residents turn up. For banks, bigger shops and hospital care, people head down to Capira town or La Chorrera. Buyers from outside tend to be growers who want planted coffee or room for agroforestry, families from Panama City and La Chorrera looking for a finca with a river, and people drawn to the cool, green ridges between Jordanal and El Valle de Antón.

Houses in Cirí Grande:

A house in Cirí Grande nearly always comes as part of a farm. Most are modest farmhouses on coffee or citrus fincas, built for working the land rather than for weekends. Larger holdings sometimes include a proper country house, such as a forty-hectare finca offered with its campestre home. If you are weighing houses for sale in Cirí Grande, Capira, judge the water source and the last kilometre of road before you judge the rooms.

Land and Lots in Cirí Grande:

Land is the market. At the smaller end are working fincas like an eight-hectare commercial farm already planted in robusta and Persian lime, offered as a place to live, invest or keep farming. Bigger agricultural holdings run past thirty hectares, such as a 34-hectare farm laid out for pineapple and coffee with frontage on an asphalt road. That frontage sets the price: the same hectare at the end of an earth track, behind a ford, is worth a good deal less and costs more to work. Up on the Jordanal side the picture changes, because the high valley has been master-planned as a country-retreat extension of Altos del María, and land there is bought for altitude and view rather than for what it grows. If you are comparing land for sale in Cirí Grande, ask how many coffee plants are on the farm, how old they are and which variety, because a mature plantation is part of what you are paying for.

FAQ:

• A listing says “Cirí Grande”. Is it in this corregimiento?

  Not necessarily. The village that carries the name sits partly inside El Cacao corregimiento, and sellers use “Cirí Grande” loosely for the whole valley. Look at the survey plan and the finca’s entry in the Registro Público, which state the corregimiento, and make sure the area and boundaries on paper match the streams and fences on the ground. Here, where so many boundaries follow creeks, walking the edge of the property is worth the time.

• Is land near the Río Indio affected by the Canal’s reservoir?

  The reservoir itself is planned further down the river, in its middle reach, and the resettlement it involves concerns some 500 families in the area to be flooded. The western hamlets of Cirí Grande sit on the same river, upstream. If the finca you want drains to the Río Indio, ask the Canal Authority whether the parcel lies within the project area before you sign.

• How do I get to Jordanal?

  From the El Valle de Antón side rather than from Capira. Jordanal lies about six kilometres from El Valle, on the edge of Altos del María, and some routes pass through that gated community, where you need permission to enter. Check exactly which road serves a property and whether you have a right of way along it.

• Can I buy a coffee finca and sell the harvest?

  Yes. Capira has several growers’ organisations, among them the Unión Campesina Capireña and the association of Cirí Grande and Trinidad growers that sells under the Cuencafé brand, and the Canal and the agriculture ministry run technical programmes for the crop. Ask the seller which variety is planted, since much of the area was renewed with improved robusta and the MIDA 96 line, and what the farm produced last season.

• What should I plan for if I build up at Jordanal?

  Damp and slope. At 1,000 metres on the Atlantic side of the divide the ground sits in a very wet cloud-forest climate, and the terrain is volcanic, with rock outcrops, cliffs and waterfalls. Budget for drainage, ventilation and a roof that can take long spells of rain, and have the site’s slope and rock checked before you design the house.