The Central American region where people live longest
Blue Zones are regions of the world with populations that regularly live into healthy old age. There are just five Blue Zones on the entire planet, and research suggests that they are caused by a combination of factors, which range from diet and weather to religion. A magazine had commissioned me to find out why Costa Rica was home to one of these exceptional regions, so Dre, my then-girlfriend, and I flew there from California.
From the town of Puerto Viejo on Costa Rica's Caribbean coast, we took a dug-out canoe up the Yorkin River, deep into the jungle that borders Panama. This is the homeland of Costa Rica's indigenous Bribri people, whose remoteness kept their culture alive during successive European invasions.
The jungle is teeming with life, and the Bribri use that bounty for everything, ranging from camphor sap that repels mosquitoes to a plant that they chew for toothache. To my untrained eye, the Bribri gardens looked much like the rest of the jungle, with different species piled around each other and butterflies flitting between the branches. But that apparent chaos was deceptive.
"That's because you are used to seeing farms of single crops," said Albin, a local guide. "We don't farm monocultures because the plants evolved to work in harmony: the legumes put nitrogen in the soil and banana trees put down potassium, so we don't need artificial products or fertilisers.
"Each plant attracts different birds, so there's hundreds of bird species here, whilst you might find only a dozen on a monoculture farm. Each species eats different insects, and there are also coral snakes and boas that kill rodents, so we don't need pesticides or traps."
"What about venomous snakes?" asked Dre.
"We do kill the fer-de-lance and bushmaster snakes," Albin said, "Our gardens are right next to our villages, and those snakes can be really dangerous, especially to curious kids. Or curious tourists."
The boat pulled into a small stone beach. Two young children – a brother and sister, watched over by their dad whilst he fished – giggled and screamed as they jumped into the river. They let the current carry them to an overhanging branch, which they used to haul themselves back to the riverbank before running upstream to repeat the whole process.
The air was filled with the stony smell of river water and the warm sweetness of flowers and grasses. As we walked towards the village, Albin plucked fruits from the trees, most of which were completely unfamiliar to me.
"This is a water apple," he said, before taking another, "This is monkey fruit. And that one is star fruit. They look different from the ones you'd find in a supermarket because they are less hybridised."
He approached a tree that was about 20ft tall and had fruits sprouting directly from the trunk and branches. They were shaped like a ribbed rugby ball about the length of my hand-span, and mostly yellow or green.
"This is the cacao tree," said Albin, tenderly touching the trunk, "Our people thought it was the most beautiful tree in paradise, and the seeds were used as currency."
He plucked a yellow fruit, dappled with orange, and knocked it against the trunk. It split in half to reveal white flesh and perfectly tessellated seeds.
"The flesh is sweet," he said, handing me a seed to suck on, "But the seed is bitter before it is prepared."
We entered a clearing of thatched houses on stilts, and a white-wooden hut that looked like a large birdhouse. Inside were racks of cacao seeds, now coloured red and brown.
"The seeds are removed from the fruit," he said, "And left to ferment for a week. That's when the chocolate flavour develops thanks to enzymes and micro-organisms. Then we dry them in the sun for five days."
I picked up one of the shrunken seeds and bit into it. It was still bitter, but it now had the distinctive taste of chocolate. Albin grabbed a handful and tossed them in a pan, which he heated on a stove. After a few minutes, he broke the seed's outer shell and pulled out the toasted inner flesh, which is called the "nib". It tasted of bitter chocolate, mellow coffee and chestnuts.
The toasted seeds were rolled with a stone, then tossed to separate the lighter shell from the heavier nibs, which Albin poured into a hand-grinder. As he turned a handle, thick paste oozed from the bottom of the grinder and the deep, rich scent of dark chocolate filled the hut.
This was pure cacao butter, filled with flecks of toasted nibs. The Bribri dry it and sell it to tourists and, when added to condensed milk, it creates the best chocolate that I have ever eaten.
"It has taken vision to bring tourism to this area," said Albin, "But it's the only way to keep our culture alive."
"Why?" I asked.
"Ever since Europeans came here," he said, "we Bribri have been under pressure. Now the government wants to build dams and ask us to give up our land, for "the good of the country and for an enormous fee. But our people already gave everything to the invaders. Where has that gotten us? All we have is our land, and our traditions. And our cacao.
"In a few years, the dam will be forgotten, and more energy needed, and new rivers dammed and the jungle turned into banana plantations. But this village, and this culture will be gone forever. Tourism forces people to notice us. And, through the story of our cacao, people learn the story of our people.
"It is strange. Cacao was important to our ancestors. It was a sacred plant that made us strong – not just physically, but spiritually. Now it's one of the reasons tourists come, and that might be what saves us from development."
"Does chocolate make Costa Rica a Blue Zone?" asked Dre.
"If it's made like this," said Albin, "Then chocolate can be a superfood. Full of antioxidants and flavonoids, which reduce inflammation. It can help to prevent cancer, and it also has esoteric, spiritual properties for our people.
"But a healthy life comes from many things: community; a sense of purpose; being outdoors; an active lifestyle. And good healthcare, of course, which is difficult in these remote communities. But, actually, not all of Costa Rica is a Blue Zone. To find the true Blue Zone, you have to go to Nicoya."
That night, as we lay in our hammocks above the trees, Dre and I began planning the next step of our journey.
"I'd never have come to this village if I was just coming on a holiday," she said, "But it's such an incredible experience being in this beautiful place and finding out about the culture first-hand. Asking questions, meeting fascinating people… it feels like such a privilege."
Nicoya is on the opposite side of Costa Rica from the land of the Bribri, on a peninsula that juts into the Pacific. Nicoya's indigenous Chorotegan culture has more in common with the Mesoamericans of Mexico than with the Bribri of the jungle because of the geography of Central America. The clearest legacy of this is in the food: the roadsides of Nicoya were filled with cobs of yellow and purple maize drying in the sunshine, just like you would find in Mexico.
"The Blue Zone is a real thing," said Ezekiel Aguirre Perez, a traditional Chorotegan potter living in the town of Mutambu, "Around here, people regularly live into their 80s and 90s, and that's without access to regular healthcare. They don't take vitamins and so on. Instead, their very way of being is healthy."
Blue Zone researchers have identified the importance of diet, with an emphasis on lots of vegetables and a low consumption of meat. In Nicoya, maize is used in everything, from patties to soups. It is fermented into chicha and chicheme alcoholic beverages, or roasted and ground into pinol, which makes a drink like malted Horlicks. The Chorotega also have a strong sense of community, with the whole town coming together to build each new house. It's a concept called "mano vuelta" which roughly translates as "work for the collective benefit".
"People look for tricks to live longer," Ezekiel said, "But you can't live a life of consumption and greed, then balance it out with superfoods. You have to live in an integrated way: an active life; a kind life; a community life.
"When someone in the village needs a new house, we all come together and build it. When someone slaughters a pig, we all come together and share it. No-one eats too much, but we all have enough. And we take it in turns to provide."
Ezekiel told us about a man called Pachito who lived nearby, and who had recently celebrated his 100th birthday. He gave us the address and suggested that we pay him a visit.
Pachito's hacienda sat in a shallow valley surrounded by flowering bushes. Ezekiel had called ahead and told him we were coming, but we had to wait with Pachito's granddaughter until he came back, because he was out visiting friends.
We were not waiting for long. Pachito trotted down the driveway on his white horse, which he tied up in the back garden and deftly dismounted. As he walked in, he gave me a firm handshake, but pulled Dre in for a kiss on the cheek.
"Such a charmer," she laughed. He responded with a wink and settled down in a chair. "Sorry for my delay," he said, "I had to go and visit a friend of mine who wasn't feeling too well – but he is 102, so what can you expect?"
"Do you ride every day?" I asked.
"When I'm still, things start to ache," he said, "I've worked all my life as a sabanero – a cowboy – so it's more natural to me than walking. I never did any kind of separate exercise, but it's a very active life."
Pachito sat down on a low wicker chair with pictures of his many descendants on the wall behind him. His granddaughter handed him a cup of warm piñol, kissed him on the head and then headed out to the garden.
"This was never a region of education and wisdom," Pachito said, "But it was always a place of hard work. The biggest difference from today is that we knew where our food came from. We grew rice and maize, raised cattle and pigs and kept chickens that fed on our food scraps. It wasn't a great assortment, but it was pure and healthy and we ate three times a day. That's enough."
"And what do you think is important, Pachito?" I asked, "What do you tell your children, and great-grandchildren and great-great grandchildren?"
"During my life," he said, "I was not a grand person – a person of significance, or anything like that – but I have always been a good friend. You have to love yourself, and others. Because if you love a friend, you cannot wish anything bad on other people. That stops things going bad for you from the inside."
As we left, he patted my hand and nodded towards Dre. "And it's very important to love a good woman," he said.
I followed Pachito's advice to the letter: Dre and I are now married.
This story is an excerpt from Why We Travel: A Journey into Human Motivation by Ash Bhardwaj, which explores 12 different motivations for travel, through personal memoir, travelogue, history, science, psychology and big ideas.
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