Into the Blue

Buettner is unsure where next year’s Blue Zone quest will go. The book will be out, but he and the team will keep going in order to fulfill their curriculum commitments to the schools and to the adults out there who take “The Blue Zones Challenge.” There are some potential destinations that have been written about by the scientific community. He mentions Crete, though he thinks the lifestyle there might be too similar to Sardinia’s—Mediterranean climate, good cheese, shepherds who take long walks, et cetera. There’s an area near the Caucasus Mountains in what used to be Soviet Georgia that might be worth investigating. There’s aforementioned Pakistan, though verifying birth records would be a bitch. And, intriguingly, there’s a narrow band of anomalous longevity stretching from Ontario into good old Minnesota.

But Buettner dismisses this last one almost out of hand. I think about something he said on the way back from the cedar shacks up on Juan Diaz, something about how he’s hard to entertain. “Yeah, much harder than that woman with the orange,” he says. “I mean, I’ve had dinner at Buckingham Palace, I’ve crossed the Sahara . . . .”

What would an adventurer do in Minnesota—and who would follow him there?                         

Mpls.St.Paul Magazine associate editor Steve Marsh visited Peru to write about Smile Network International for the July 2006 issue.