Miraleste

Miraleste covers 43.7 acres inside Talega and holds 107 homes on 127 parcels, at a median parcel of 0.17 acres. Four streets serve it and all four begin with Via: Via Belleza, Via Cancion, Via Abrazar and Via Paquete. Residential Medium Low Density land accounts for 18.7 acres, private open space for 16.7 and public right of way for 6.8.

A third of a mile of the Cristianitos South trail runs inside the boundary. Miraleste belongs to the Talega master association and falls under the Talega Specific Plan across 97 percent of its area. All 42.5 zoned acres sit in the state's Very High fire hazard severity zone, the most severe class used in San Clemente. Capistrano Unified's locator returned Vista del Mar Elementary, Vista del Mar Middle and San Clemente High at all five interior points tested.

Miraleste came out of the ground with the first wave of Talega, in homes built from about 2000 on. What was put here is large two story Spanish houses on cul de sacs, several of them single loaded so that one side of the street looks straight into the canyon instead of at another roofline, and the canyon views are still the thing agents lead with. The four street names are odd for Talega. Via Belleza, Via Cancion, Via Abrazar and Via Paquete are qualities and gestures, in a community whose other villages take their names from Mediterranean towns: Amalfi, Portofino, Ravenna, Catania, Alassio, Cantabria.

The canyon behind those fences was working country until very recently, and getting in and out of it was the community's first real complaint. For years there were only two main roads out of Talega, and the La Pata extension that finally tied it north to San Juan Capistrano did not start construction until 2014. The nearest landmark is over the ridge and easy to miss: the Capistrano Test Site, run by TRW and later by Northrop Grumman, where the lunar module descent engines for the Apollo landings were developed.