Embedded in a lush slope of jungle, my villa peered over the glimmering bay below, the whole scene animated by butterflies, bird songs, and the treetop rustling of monkeys. As I floated in my private plunge pool, reminding myself to take it all in, I reflexively grabbed my phone to check the weather app. I placed it back down on the towel, scolding myself for the lapse in mindfulness. Within seconds I grabbed my phone to check it again before remembering I just did.
This impulse, I rationalized, came from wanting to know exactly what to expect: If I’d be able to optimize every moment at the serene tropical wonderland that is Andaz Costa Rica Resort at Peninsula Papagayo, which just hosted the first official Blue Zones-sponsored retreat. I was a stone’s throw from the Nicoya Peninsula, an eighty-mile stretch just south of Nicaragua that’s home to one of the highest concentrations of centenarians in the world, making it one of five geographic “blue zones” where journalist Dan Buettner and a team of researchers found people lived extraordinarily long lives, and good ones, too. I had the strong suspicion they were not addicted to their weather apps.
Ever since getting diagnosed with advanced-stage Hodgkin lymphoma in early 2023, I’ve been glued to my phone, living in perpetual fear of test results but also of being alone with my thoughts. My body is not the same after cancer. Bulky IVs of high-dose chemotherapy pumped through my veins for nearly a year. Bouts of immobility, often in hospital beds, weakened the muscles I’d been dutifully strengthening over a lifetime of joyless exercise and healthy eating. There were days after chemo where lying down on the couch wasn’t down enough; I had to get on the floor. My painstakingly balanced lifestyle hadn’t delivered the benefits I was promised: lasting health and wellness. I controlled everything a person can control, and it hadn’t outsmarted cancer, rendering hundreds of tedious salads totally senseless. Could a Blue Zones Retreat offer me tools to reconnect to my body, after I’d spent a year learning how powerless I’d been to control it? Could it help a person who is already the thing everyone is working so hard to avoid—being chronically sick—and who is thus already disqualified from the possibility of centenarian status? I wanted to try it, because this stretch of Costa Rica seemed like a tranquil backdrop for relearning how to live well.
The concept of blue zones originated from the work of demographers Gianni Pes and Michel Poulain, who identified Sardinia as having the highest global concentration of men living over 100 years old. Buettner furthered the research by identifying other longevity hotspots and the lifestyle principles they all had in common. He called these shared, pro-longevity habits “The Power 9,” which include moving naturally, eating until you’re only 80% full, connecting to a sense of purpose, and “downshifting” after work or stressful events. Oh, and lots of beans.
Since the popular 2023 Netflix documentary Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones, there has been an explosion of wellness tourism to blue zones, with immersive experiences like this longevity retreat to Ikaria, Greece, making it one of the biggest travel trends of 2024. To offer programming of its own, the Blue Zones organization brought on health coach Céline Vadam to help design retreats in blue zones around the world, which, in addition to Nicoya and Sardinia, include Okinawa, Japan; Ikaria, Greece; and Loma Linda, California.
This dreamy week at the Peninsula Papagayo Andaz, which I also filled with reiki and aerial sound healing, marked the first official Blue Zones retreat. Vadam, a bubbly French woman who is also the founder of the wellness consultancy We(i) Think and health coaching brand Retrouv’l, planned intimate hour-long workshops on topics like happiness and purpose, focusing specifically on the healthy attributes identified in this Costa Rican blue zone, like the cultural emphasis on social interactions and family ties.
As Vadam explained to me, Blue Zones the company isn’t selling an individualized view of health; the whole point of Buettner’s research is that our environments have an outsize impact on our wellbeing. If you live an hour from a store selling fresh fruits and vegetables, of course your diet will never amount to that of a Sardinian goat herder. As someone who works hard not to blame herself for her cancer and other chronic illness, I was pleased to hear that the organization works with over 75 cities in the U.S. to help make people’s environments healthier, rather than scolding them for bad choices. One of its community assessments, for example, is walkability, which determines whether a city is safe for families and disabled people to stay active in their environments. “We also work with companies on how to have healthy options in their cafeterias,” Vadam told me. “We work with restaurants on portions. We work with supermarkets to make sure that the healthy vegetables are in a more prominent place than the crisps and chocolate bars. We organize walking groups.”
Retreats, necessarily, are more individually-oriented, because individuals sign up for them hoping to learn ways they can take action to improve their lives. Before my first session, over a breakfast of fresh fruit and intoxicating local coffee curated by the resort’s head barista, a Costa Rican coffee genius named Luis Carlos Herrera, I took the Blue Zones online “vitality test” to determine my life expectancy. The quiz asked lifestyle questions about diet and exercise habits, but also about how many days out of 30 I was sad, and whether I’ve had any major illnesses like cancer. At the end, my life expectancy flashed on the screen: 50.3. There was an option to click on a button that said “Add 37.2 more years.” I laughed. My first thirty-some years hadn’t been so fab: Was tacking on three more decades really so desirable?
At the first introductory workshop, located in one of the property’s opulent two-story suites with sweeping vistas of the bay, Vadam had our group of six examine a wheel of the Power 9 principles. She asked us to identify how we felt we were faring on each, drawing a dot either close to the circumference (great) or close to the center (bad), and then connecting all the dots. If you felt you were excelling in every area, from the “80% Rule” (fullness goal) to “Loved Ones First,” your dots would connect to a perfect circle; if you felt good about just a few, your shape would have a zig-zagged perimeter.
My shape was a chunky star, with four main points indicating my strong suits: “Plant Slant” (eating a mostly plant-based diet), “Right Tribe” (having a good social circle), “Move Naturally,” and “Downshift” (the ability to unwind, whether through napping or prayer.) I felt satisfied to see I was doing well in those areas, which almost compensated for my “Purpose” dot in the center of the circle; I essentially gave myself a 0. I reflected on how many hours a day I watch 90 Day Fiancé, and I challenged myself to watch slightly less, in favor of activities that are aligned with my values, like looking at my dog. I felt a sense of progress.
“Wellness programs today are very exclusive, while Blue Zones principles are inclusive,” said Vadam. “They are strong enough to make an impact, but flexible enough to ask, ‘How does it move into your life?’” I leaned into the flexibility, because there were certain lifestyle suggestions I knew were not for me. For example, I would never want to live a life where I ate until I was only 80% full. I feel strongly that anyone who has endured chemotherapy, which can not only make it difficult to eat but also make food taste worse, deserves to enjoy food exactly how much they want to. I was happy to start eating more beans, but Dan Buettner would have to pull my Cheez-Its from my cold, dead hands. On the topic of movement, I’ve learned from recovery (and my physical therapists) that the amount I exercise or don’t exercise needs to be dictated by how my body is feeling, which changes on a day-to-day basis. While I wish I could make some pledge about walking more to pick up groceries, rather than getting them delivered, I know that’s not realistic.
In the session on happiness, Vadam went over the 3Ps vital to emotional well-being—pleasure, purpose, and pride—and asked participants to consider how our environments impact our happiness. I reflected on the garbage in my apartment and the fact that I rarely see grass. I scribbled “bad” on my notebook clipboard. As soon as I started to feel deficient, I was reassured to be in a small group of people who also shared difficulties accessing happiness on a daily basis. The workshop format helped to alleviate some of the shame we can feel for doing life things wrong or not well enough, because nobody except the surrounding monkeys, who were living lives beyond my wildest dreams, had it all figured out.
When it comes to medical advice for my illness, I only have ears for my team of doctors, nutritionists, and surgeons back home, who are experts on the latest cancer research. Unfortunately, no amount of beans or good vibes can stave off a recurrence. But I thought about the little things that actually are in my control: being more intentional about scheduling time with friends, carving out more of my day to decompress, and doing things that fill me with a sense of purpose. Strolling to dinner, I chose to release the “living long” part of Blue Zones philosophy and to embrace the “living well” tenet. Rather than instilling a specific doctrine, the retreat reminded me of what I liked about life, like the sense of wonder I get when I travel and the feeling of being surrounded by natural beauty.
These little shifts in perspectives, of course, were easy to do at a luxurious eco-resort with a great spa, awe-inspiring biodiversity, and exceptional restaurants committed to local sourcing. At Chao Pescao, the resort’s hip pan-Latin tapas bar, I ordered some blue zone-inspired dishes they were offering for the retreat, made with indigenous Costa Rican ingredients that are part of the reason locals live so long. Between sips of a gorgeous non-alcoholic margarita, I dove into a plate of seared local mahi mahi, perched atop a coyote pesto and garnished with lots of culantro (a potent type of native cilantro) and crispy pejibaye, the sweet and nutty fruit of regional peach palm trees. For dessert, I sank into a slice of dense purple corn cake made of native Pujagua corn, topped with a floral honey ice cream. For maybe the first time in my life, I wanted to live forever.
