This website is a celebration of Home, my Home for the last 7 years, San Ramon. Known as the cradle of Poets and Presidents, it was founded in the mid 1800´s as a place where people who were unhappy with the policies of the central government, based in San Jose, could ¨exile¨ themselves.
Of course, being only 40 kilometers from San Jose (and 30 from the International airport), it´s not much of an exile, but 150 years ago, it was a 2 day trip by oxcart. It´s present day population of @ 50,000 (and maybe 50
Americans, Canadians and Europeans) are pleasantly scattered around San Ramon and its surrounding Villages, like Los Angeles Norte and Sur, Santiago, San Isidro, San Pedro, Esperanza, Piedades Norte and Sur, La Paz, all small, with a tiny school, a Catholic Church, a soccer field and a small grocery store with the town´s pay phone in front, all typical Costa Rican villages.
This type of atmosphere of intellectual and political rebellion (let´s call it dissent) is what created the Poets and Presidents, most notably Jose (Pepe) Figueres (who has a Museum in town). He is best known for turning swords into plowshares: disbanding the Army (and Navy and Air Force), then taking military installations and turning them into schools. He created the Social Security and National Medicine system, and is considered the modern Father of the Country.
San Ramon is very friendly to outsiders, whether foreigners or locals. Witness that their main elementary school is named for the Father of another Country, George (Jorge) Washington. There is the Western (Occidente) campus of the University of Costa Rica, which welcomes students from the surrounding area, and 2 bilingual schools, to help local students in learning English.
Celebrations are a tradition in Costa Rica, and there´s religious and secular Fiestas, all great fun: one honors the Patron Saint, San Ramon Neonato, the other San Ramon the city. There´s the Festival de Boyeros, with decorated ox carts with matching pairs of oxen; the yearly Tope, where horses and dressed up ladies and cowboys parade themselves through town, with accompanying salsa bands on trailers.
There´s the Entrada de los Santos, where the effigies of saints from all the neighboring villages are brought on
the shoulders of the parishioners, and each village group marches through San Ramon streets, singing and dancing, taking their village church effigy to the Cathedral, where it will stay a week with all the others, and be carried back to their vilage in another Fiesta next week.
Yes, San Ramon is a special town. It has a blessed mixture of the old and new: 3 screen movie theater in a mini-Mall with food court, high speed Internet, Chinese and Italian restaurants, large food stores, etc.
But it also has a weekend market for local growers to sell their fresh vegetables, as well as a central market open all week with fresh veggies, a Festival of Lanterns, where children parade thru town with home made
lanterns, and a candy festival, where locally made hard taffy candy is given away to children of all ages (think Halloween without the scary costumes).
Check out the rest of the pages for more views of San Ramon, and some of the real estate opportunities to be found. If you don´t find the special place you want, contact me and let me know what you´re looking for, mayhaps I can help you find it.
|
|
