Living Healthy to 100

By Dan Buettner, May & June 2008

A remarkable group of centenarians living on Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula share their secrets


It was sunrise in the village of Hojancha when Tommy Castillo and I mounted a pair of bikes and whizzed downhill from his pink wooden house into the steamy Costa Rica morning.

Our route took us by the town clinic, past a mechanic where the rhythm of local cowboy music blared into the street from tinny speakers. With truants’ delight, we swooped down another hill past the village school, and from there, the houses thinned out. On one side of the road, buildings gave way to a wall of jungle. The road dipped to where the pavement bridged a creek and continued up a steep incline. Tommy, wearing a white-toothed grin and a Yankees baseball cap, stood up hard on his pedals and pulled ahead of me. I was breathing heavily. Sweat trickled down my back.

Off the main road, our wheels traced parallel ruts past a horse barn and a vegetable garden. The track ended in a clearing with a raised chicken coop, a tin-roofed wooden house, and a woodshed stacked high with split logs. Out front, a woman wearing a bright pink dress, hoop earrings, and carnival beads vigorously swept the jungle floor, sending up a dust cloud. Behind her, a few long golden pencils of light angled through the trees.

“Hola, Mamá!” shouted Tommy as he dismounted his bike. Tommy’s mother—Francesca “Panchita” Castillo—dropped her broom in surprise and gleefully greeted her son with an embrace, then turned to me. “OyEEE, God blesses me!” she exclaimed in Spanish. “I have foreign visitors!” Then she hugged me.

She took us both by the hand and led us to her porch, where she jumped up on a bench and dangled her legs in the air. It was only 7:30 a.m., but Panchita was ready for her midmorning break. She’d been up since 4:00 and had already knelt next to her bed to say her morning prayers; fetched two eggs from the chicken coop; ground corn by hand; brewed coffee from well water drawn from the limestone bedrock beneath her house; made herself a breakfast of beans, eggs, and tortillas; split wood; and, using a machete almost as tall as her five-foot frame, cleared the encroaching bush around her house. She asked if she could prepare breakfast for us. “No,” said Tommy, who was sweating lightly under his baseball cap. “I’m not hungry.”

“Oh, you know better,” Panchita scolded. “Let me make you some eggs.” And she jumped off the bench.

“No, no, Mamá,” Tommy said, shifting uncomfortably on his bench. “I’m fine.”

Panchita pulled herself back up and now began to stroke Tommy’s knee. “How is your leg, my son?” A few days earlier he had injured it working around the house.

“Mamá, I’m fine, please!” he said, grimacing. As the scene unfolded, I sat by and smiled to see an exchange between a loving mother and a son who didn’t want to be embarrassed in front of a new friend. Under the circumstances, I could see Tommy’s point. He was, after all, an 80-year-old man and a great-grandfather. His mother, Panchita, had recently celebrated her 100th birthday. Hojancha, where they live, has one of the healthiest, longest-lived populations on the planet—a place where sons can take their time growing up.


Costa Rica's Blue Zone

Where in the World Do People Live Longest?

In these four far-flung Blue Zones:

Loma Linda, CA, U.S.A

Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica

Sardinia, Italy

Okinawa, Japan

I first learned of Costa Rica’s remarkable centenarians, such as Panchita, after publishing my 2005 National Geographic article, “The Secrets of Long Life,” in which I’d identified three regions of the world—Okinawa; Sardinia; and Loma Linda, California—where people live longer than anywhere else, areas that came to be known as Blue Zones. I was still curious to locate more of the world’s undiscovered Blue Zones. So, using my experience as the founder of Quest Network, which has created more than a dozen interactive global expeditions for an online audience of 12 million students in 80,000 classrooms, I put together a research team to investigate a promising group of villages on the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica. According to our findings, another potential Blue Zone might exist there. After a preliminary trip to Nicoya to interview a random sample of at least 20 people over 90 years old, to get a feeling for their lifestyles, and to verify their ages in the national archives, we realized we needed to take a second, bigger trip—one with a larger research team and a plan to explore further why these people were living so long.

When I returned to Nicoya in January 2007, I came armed with a plan and a team of experts. We set up our headquarters at Dorati Lodge, located on the forested edge of Hojancha, near Nicoya’s core. Its open-air dining pavilion—a sheltered, bush-flanked slab of cement—became our regular meeting spot. Each night we’d create reports and short videos so we could examine our findings.

After dinner the first night, I gathered the team and presented the plan to them. “We’ll have two teams,” I began. “One team will find and interview as many of Nicoya’s elderly as possible. As results come in, that team will report back to the rest of us on the elders’ general condition, what they eat, and any other practices that occur with regularity. The rest of us will be charged with finding people who fit the longevity profile and interviewing them to get their stories.”

The days of our expedition unfolded with satisfying progress. We’d wake each morning at 7:00 and gather in the dining pavilion, where we’d take breakfast and then disperse: one team to conduct interviews; the other, to track down more verified centenarians from a list provided by the University of San José. Just before sunset the teams would return, flush with some new discovery, and converge in the dining pavilion. After dinner each team member shared his or her findings with the rest of the group.


Panchita's Story

One night toward the end of the expedition, it was my turn to stand up and present a report to the team. I told them about Panchita. In many ways she represented everything I’d learned so far about Nicoyan longevity: successful centenarians here were religious, family-oriented, unconcerned with money, flexible but ultimately decisive, and consummately likable. I clicked through pictures of Panchita chopping wood, clearing bush with a machete, and walking through town in her bright pink dress and carnival beads. I told everyone that of the 200 centenarians I have interviewed around the world, Panchita was the most extraordinary. “You’ve got to introduce me to her,” said our team psychologist, Elizabeth Lopez, who had a special interest in well-being. “I’ve done 20 interviews so far, and I’ve never seen anyone like her.”

Panchita lived just a few hundred yards from the Dorati Lodge, so Elizabeth and I left the next morning on foot. We walked past the howler monkeys in the mango trees overhead, then out the driveway, and into the village of Hojancha. Elizabeth had read an article in the Costa Rican newspapers about the Blue Zone project and, having recently retired from the World Bank, was looking to get involved with something new. She turned out to be a godsend. A Costa Rican native, she spoke fluent Spanish and thus served as a perfect liaison between our team and the interviewees. Moreover, she could help expand our research questionnaire to include a way to measure psychological factors—such as happiness and faith levels—in long-lived people. As we walked, I asked her what she was finding.

“Dan, these Nicoyans are so incredible,” she answered. “They are so positive and so devoted to their families. All but one of the 33 Nicoyans we have met live with their family.” Elizabeth was looking at me, gesticulating as we walked. “They have a wonderful support network. They also tend to have a large number of visitors that they receive almost every afternoon, which is both a physical and psychological safety net.”

We walked over the same bridge that Tommy and I had biked over a few days earlier.

At Panchita’s house we loudly called out for her. She pushed open a wooden shutter and, when she recognized me, raised her hands in unmitigated joy. She hurried out into the courtyard to hug both of us. “Panchita,” I said in a raised voice (she is partially deaf and blind), “this is Elizabeth. She’s a scientist from San José. She wants to visit with you.”

“Oooo!” she whooped. “Of course. Come sit down.” She was wearing a festive frilly dress like the one she had worn the first time I met her, but this time it was green instead of pink. Long green earrings dangled from her ears, and she had pulled back her gray-tinged hair with a rhinestone-studded comb. She led us to the two wooden benches that line her porch.

Elizabeth quickly established a rapport with Panchita and asked her about her life as a child and young woman. Panchita told her she was a descendant of a Cuban revolutionary hero and that she had had a beautiful childhood.

“In those days there were no roads in Nicoya,” she said. “My father owned a guesthouse, and occasionally mule trains would come by. I woke up at 3:00 each morning to make coffee and tortillas for the men who stayed overnight. I took care of my parents.” Then, turning to me, she scolded congenially, “It’s like this, Papi.” She always called me Papi, a term of endearment. “Those who honor their parents are rewarded by God.”

Panchita eluded direct questioning about her marriage, but we do know that she raised her four children mostly by herself. The family all lived with Panchita’s parents until they died; then Panchita inherited their farm. There, the family grew most of their own food. Whenever they needed salt or sugar, Panchita would walk 18 miles into town and back to get it. “Life was hard those days, Papi.”

Once—when she was a mere 70—she was bathing in a river when she noticed a man was watching her. “I rapidly put on my clothes and picked up a stick,” she said, swinging an imaginary limb over her head. “And then I chased him down and almost beat him to death.” She finished the story, and her mood turned wistful. “Oh, Papi,” she said finally. “That was a very bad thing. I had to ask the priest for forgiveness. But still, God blesses me.”

Later in our conversation her normally festive demeanor turned serious again. She put her hand on my arm; she had an endearing habit of gently, instinctually touching people to make a point. I looked down at her hands—the long, smooth fingers and neatly trimmed nails. She wore a dented silver band on her ring finger.

“They killed my son,” she said, fixing me with a brown-eyed gaze. The lines in her lightly creased face reflected the sadness of a 50-year-old tragedy. “When he was a beautiful 20-year-old man, he got into a stupid fight with a friend, and he killed my son.” She sat silent for a minute, her legs still swinging back and forth. “God does everything for a reason,” she resumed brightly. Then, with the optimism characteristic of many centenarians, she concluded, “I am a blessed woman today.”

Elizabeth turned to me and smiled in a way that said: “See what I mean?”

Late in the morning the neighbor boy, ten-year-old Luis, arrived, as he does each day, to help Panchita catch her free-range chickens and put them in the coop. Later, her 31-year-old neighbor, Carmen Gómez, stopped by to help Panchita sweep her floors. “I don’t come here because I have to,” she told me when I asked. “Panchita has a way of making my day happier. Everyone in Hojancha loves her.”

At noon Panchita told me it was time to make lunch. Elizabeth and I followed her into the kitchen of her simple house. The room was spare and pleasant: a small, well-lit space with two windows that opened to the yard, a small pantry, a wood counter, a soapstone sink with running water, and a small refrigerator. A bowl of bananas and papayas sat on the counter for easy access, and everything else—beans, onions, garlic, greens, corn, which all required preparation—remained out of sight.

Panchita still cooked on a wood-burning fogón, the traditional clay oven of the Chorotega, the indigenous people who inhabited Nicoya before the Spanish arrival in 1522. She moved slowly and deliberately, heating up beans and seasoning them with garlic and onions. From an earthen pot she scooped out grayish corn that had been soaking in lime hydrate overnight, rinsed the kernels, and ground them into dough. She patted out tortillas and roasted them over the open fire. She melted a dollop of lard on an iron griddle and fried eggs. Finally she cut paper-thin slices of fresh cheese—an impressive feat given the fact she could barely see the cheese, much less her fingers.

In about 30 minutes she presented us with lunch—small portions of beans, corn tortillas, and one egg on a small plate. The serving looked huge, but it amounted to about half of what you’d get if you ordered the breakfast special at your local diner. “Food gives life!” she shouted and told us to sit down and eat. I felt both humbled and privileged to be served a meal prepared by a centenarian. But after much polite arguing, I managed to convince Panchita that she and Luis should eat the meal. Elizabeth and I had lunch waiting for us back at the Dorati Lodge.

On our walk back, I told Elizabeth I agreed with her observations about faith and longevity. Panchita’s faith was amazing—her unwavering belief that no matter how bad things got, God would take care of everything. Thinking back, I realized that most of the 200 centenarians I had met believed in a similar guiding power. I asked Elizabeth if faith really has a profound impact on longevity.
Membership – Join, renew, or learn about exclusive AARP member benefits.

“Absolutely,” she said. “When my team was doing our interviews, I noticed that when you ask the most highly functioning seniors how they are, they always say, ‘I feel good...thanks to God.’ Yet they may be blind and deaf and their bones hurt. Psychologists call this an external locus of control. In other words, they tend to relinquish control of their lives to God. The fact that God is in control of their lives relieves any economic, spiritual, or well-being anxiety they might otherwise have. They go through life with the peaceful certitude that someone is looking out for them.” I had heard of a study that echoed these findings: the researchers looked at participants who attended religious services once a month or more. Over seven and a half years the researchers found they had up to a 35 percent reduced risk of death.

Later in the afternoon Elizabeth visited Panchita and asked her more questions. At dinner that night Elizabeth shared a special moment with me. “I was alone with this lovely, magical person,” she began. “She doesn’t live in a nice home. She’s so poor yet so satisfied with what she has. There was a total acceptance. But I wanted to help her anyway. So I handed her 20 dollars.”

“And...what happened?” I asked.

“She told me, ‘I had no money to buy food. But I knew that God would provide,’ squeezing my arm. ‘And now He has.’ ”

Dan Buettner is an explorer, writer, and Guinness Book world-record holder whose new book is The Blue Zone: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest (National Geographic).

Adapted with permission of the National Geographic Society from the book The Blue Zone: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who's Lived the Longest by Dan Buettner. Copyright © 2008 Dan Buettner. All rights reserved.