Into the Blue

Costa Rica’s Tamarindo Beach has become a second Cancun—a sandy playground for wealthy American and European tourists, with proliferate McCondos, S.S. Minnow fishing charters, and shuttle-bug golf courses. But Dan Buettner isn’t here to follow the tourist bloat. He’s here to explore the not-so picture-postcard part of the subtropical archipelago. Costa Rica isn’t the Siberian plain or the Sahara Desert, but Buettner, one of a dying breed who’s made a name in the adventure trade, has conquered those places already. He’s here to find the fountain of youth.

It isn’t as Geraldo-at-Capone’s-tomb as it sounds. In 2005, Buettner published “The Secrets of Long Life,” a long article in National Geographic, describing his “quest for the modern fountain of youth.” While Buettner claims he isn’t looking for a “magic bullet or a secret potion,” he has carved out a fountain-of-youth beat and is reporting on parts of the world that have high concentrations of people who have extraordinarily high life expectancy. He was inspired, he says, by an academic paper on the unusual number of centenarians on the Italian island of Sardinia. That report—which coined the tag “Blue Zone” that Buettner has since built his brand around—was written by Gianni Pes and Michel Poulain. Pes, a Sardinian physician, and Poulain, a Belgian demographer, are now members of Buettner’s Costa Rican quest team. Their ongoing research is funded in part by a National Geographic grant.

Buettner’s 2005 article identified two additional Blue Zones—in Okinawa, Japan, and Loma Linda, California—and attempted to synthesize the similarities and differences in the lifestyles of these “longevity all-stars,” as Buettner called them, and pass along certain components of their long-life styles to National Geographic’s audience. Next year, Buettner will publish a book that will include a fourth area: the small region on Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula he’s investigating now—a hilly, eighty-by-thirty-mile swath of land populated by 100,000 natives, a population that he and his team says has a freakishly good chance of living to 100.

Right now, I’m in a van following Buettner as he hangs out the back end of a jeep, jostling with four Costa Rican sabaneros (the Tico word for “cowboy”) while his cameraman steadies himself against the back of the jeep’s cab, filming Buettner while he interviews one of the men. It’s ten in the morning, but it’s already hot, and the jeep is kicking up the red dirt of the unpaved road. This isn’t, I repeat, postcard Costa Rica; it’s more like something out of a Sergio Leone spaghetti Western. There is dry cattle-country grass on either side of the road, and the occasional lonely guanacaste tree provides the only respite from the sun’s glare. Buettner and his cameraman are shooting a video on sabanero culture, which will be broadcast on the team’s website two days hence. The jeep comes to a halt by a wooden corral that in an hour will be full of Brahma bulls, but right now Buettner and the cameraman are unsure of the relevance of their footage. “That was gay,” Buettner cracks dismissively as he jumps off the back of the jeep.

While his chosen profession may seem anachronistic in an age when the world’s deepest, coldest, most dangerous parts have been thoroughly illuminated on the Discovery Channel, Buettner has made an extremely successful career out of it. He won an Emmy for a PBS documentary on his cycle trip across South Africa, which he coproduced; he is mentioned in the Guinness Book of World Records for his grueling bicycle treks across Africa, the Americas, and the former Soviet Union (he’s written two books about the bike trips). And twelve years ago, he became an Internet education pioneer when elementary school classes using satellites directed him on his adventures: Each day, school kids across the country voted on what they would like Dan and his retinue to do next in their quest for Mayan secrets, and Buettner and his team would comply. After five “Maya quests,” classrooms followed and directed the team as it retraced Marco Polo’s route to China. Last year, classrooms interacted with Buettner’s first Blue Zone quest in Okinawa, and now the kids are following him in Costa Rica. “I’m big with sixth graders,” he says. “But with Blue Zones, I’m trying to reach out to an even larger audience.”