Into the Blue

He’s no longer pursuing record-breaking bicycle treks; he now spends most of his time chasing down stories in a van or a jeep, using his laptop to take notes and a camera-wielding sidekick to get the film. He’s been working on this dusty hacienda since before daybreak, yet his khaki shirt and bush pants are still clean. At forty-six, he looks more like an explorer than ever, with a tanned face that crinkles up attractively around his eyes and gray just beginning to touch his temples. He lumbers around with a modified simian swagger, carefully overpronating. When in front of the ubiquitous video camera, he does a creepy news-anchor thing, switching into an extra pleasing demeanor to address his disembodied audience. He avoids the “Hey, kids!” pander and imbues each shot with an earnest, movie star cool. He looks comfortable, engaged, and empathetic no matter who he’s with or what he’s doing. “I’ve bicycled 120,000 miles, and I understand what it’s like to be hungry, to be tired, to sleep on the ground,” he explains. “I have a certain compassion that’s come out of that.”

His cool-guy demeanor doesn’t change when he’s back at the team’s home base. This is Buettner’s largest quest team to date, comprising two video cameramen, one still cameraman, two other on-air talent types, a video editor, a web producer (Dan’s brother Nick), another producer, two demographers, a physician/statistician, a psychologist who used to work at the World Bank, and a local research assistant/fixer who’s familiar with the Costa Rican bush.

For nineteen days, the team is staying at a spartan log-cabin resort in the village of Hojancha, situated high enough on the peninsula to cool down considerably at night. Everyday, the team eats breakfast and dinner together—simple meals usually heavy on beans and rice. They work on the quest’s website nearly around the clock, typically waking at seven and working until two or three the next morning, checking how the kids voted the night before. (Are they interested today in alternative medicine or cowboys?) As the group’s alpha explorer, Buettner leads with the unassuming aloofness of a popular camp counselor. And although, according to his brother, “Dan has delegated on this quest more than on any previous trip,” team members seem insecure at times, unsure of what their leader really wants. They’re constantly asking him to check this script or that rough cut. They seem eager to work hard for him.

Buettner in turn is quick to advise his younger teammates—“Don’t be afraid to dig dry wells” or “Don’t rely on the interview with your taxi driver”—and he has a penchant for concluding conversations with the phrase “at the end of the day.” He insists that everything the team does—whether it’s a 500-word dispatch about alternative medicine, a video about family life, or a “mystery photo” of the papaya and its role in the Nicoyan diet—include, in DanSpeak, one “actionable gem,” meaning a kernel of information the audience at home can take to heart. Buettner believes he can’t gain anybody’s attention with just a “jagged information stream.” You have to tell a story, with a beginning, middle, and end, he says, and hide the “actionable gem” somewhere in there, so your audience will take it away almost subliminally. “At the end of the day, you want a program or a book that’s actually going to change behaviors,” he says. “You have to evoke emotion. You have to make people feel and not make people think.”