Into the Blue Zone - Pure Vida!

View from Our Room

Ahhh, vacation time! Precisely at 9 am (a little unusual for Costa Rica) on January 27, our air-conditioned (ahhh) van arrived at our hotel to take us to the Tango Mar Hotel. The first leg of the journey took us about 1 1/2 hours to Puntarenas, where we boarded a ferry boat for the hour-long trip across the bay to the Nicoya Peninsula. Then another van picked us up for the 45 minute trip to Tango Mar!  It was just a little nerve-wracking driving up the very rutted narrow gravel road, following the faded signs for "Tango Mar Bar and Restaurant," wondering what the heck we had gotten ourselves into! Well, in fact, we have landed in Pure Vida (pure life, i.e., Costa Rican heaven). We were greeted here with ice cold face towels and a fruity rum cocktail at the front desk, and then escorted to our room by the Belgian owner of the property, the amazing Hilda! This is, in fact, the most beautiful place we have ever stayed!

View from the Breakfast Table

Tango Mar is on the Nicoya Peninsula, named by National Geographic researcher and journalist, Dan Buettner, and a team of the world’s top experts in longevity as one of the five "blue zones" in the world (others are Italy's Island of Sardinia; Japan's Island of Okinawa; California's Loma Linda; and, the Greek Island of Icaria has). These are areas of the world where people live healthy lives well past 100 years of age. Buettner (who was on Oprah on January 26!), in his book, The Blue Zones, describes four main steps to help create a blue zone:

1. Move naturally: your home should go along with the natural way you move. Concentrate on things you like to do, such as gardening, walking, swimming or spending time with family and friends.

2. Express your ideas with a positive attitude and allow time for rest.

3. Eat wisely: forget those diet trends that force you to consume 20% less than normal. Do not consume processed foods and have a few glasses of red wine daily. Please remember: do not over indulge.

4. Be part of the right tribe: put those you love first and try and reconnect with your religion or connect to one you wish to explore.

Interesting how close these ideas are to the Five Ways to Well-Being identified by Nic Marks' (of the Happy Planet Index) and colleagues in a research project undertaken for the UK Government Office of Science as part of their Foresight Project. The brief was to create a set of evidence based positive actions individuals could undertake which would improve their well-being. 

  

1. Connect - Invest your time in your loved ones, in your friends, family and acquaintances. Meet people. Talk to them. Understand how they improve your life, and also how you improve theirs. Knowing that you mean something to someone can be one of the most powerful positive forces in the world.

2. Be active - When exercising, the level of serotonin in your body rises and you get a powerful feeling of wellbeing. Something as simple as kicking a ball or throwing a Frisbee around a garden with a friend can knock both this and the previous point off in one go. If you're feeling down, go for a brisk walk and get some air. You'll soon feel better.

3. Take notice - Keeping an eye on what's going on around you keeps your brain running smoothly. If you see an application for planning permission pinned to a lamp-post, and even the tiniest part of your brain wants to know what it says, then go and read it. On a train or bus, rather than burying your nose in a book or your mobile phone, look out of the window and see what's happening outside.

4. Keep learning - Humanity's relentless curiosity is behind almost every single one of our species' accomplishments. Once you've finished your formal education, that's no reason not to stop learning. Actively seek out different viewpoints, and if you don't understand them then find someone knowledgeable to explain them to you.

5. Give - Finally, be generous. A survey gave £100 to two groups of people, instructing one group to spend it on themselves, and another to spend it on other people. Afterwards, the latter group's spirits were significantly higher. If you don't have cash, give your time, your attention or your expertise instead.

Bottom line - don't worry - be happy - Pure Vida!

Dave will blog soon about the amazing sabbatical interviews we have conducted here in Costa Rica. Next up (we hope) will be with Nature Air, the world's first and only carbon neutral airline (http://www.natureair.com/). We're thinking we may take one of their twin-engine planes back to San Jose on February 1.