I Attended the World’s First Official Blue Zone Retreat, Here’s What I Learned

Embedded in a lush slope of jungle, my villa peered over the glimmering bay below, the whole scene animated by butterflies, bird songs, and the treetop rustling of monkeys. As I floated in my private plunge pool, reminding myself to take it all in, I reflexively grabbed my phone to check the weather app. I placed it back down on the towel, scolding myself for the lapse in mindfulness. Within seconds I grabbed my phone to check it again before remembering I just did.

This impulse, I rationalized, came from wanting to know exactly what to expect: If I’d be able to optimize every moment at the serene tropical wonderland that is Andaz Costa Rica Resort at Peninsula Papagayo, which just hosted the first official Blue Zones-sponsored retreat. I was a stone’s throw from the Nicoya Peninsula, an eighty-mile stretch just south of Nicaragua that’s home to one of the highest concentrations of centenarians in the world, making it one of five geographic “blue zones” where journalist Dan Buettner and a team of researchers found people lived extraordinarily long lives, and good ones, too. I had the strong suspicion they were not addicted to their weather apps.

The Andaz Costa Rica Resort at Peninsula Papagayo

Andaz Costa Rica Resort at Peninsula Papagayo

A guest taking part in the resort’s Blue Zones Retreat

Andaz Costa Rica Resort at Peninsula Papagayo

Ever since getting diagnosed with advanced-stage Hodgkin lymphoma in early 2023, I’ve been glued to my phone, living in perpetual fear of test results but also of being alone with my thoughts. My body is not the same after cancer. Bulky IVs of high-dose chemotherapy pumped through my veins for nearly a year. Bouts of immobility, often in hospital beds, weakened the muscles I’d been dutifully strengthening over a lifetime of joyless exercise and healthy eating. There were days after chemo where lying down on the couch wasn’t down enough; I had to get on the floor. My painstakingly balanced lifestyle hadn’t delivered the benefits I was promised: lasting health and wellness. I controlled everything a person can control, and it hadn’t outsmarted cancer, rendering hundreds of tedious salads totally senseless. Could a Blue Zones Retreat offer me tools to reconnect to my body, after I’d spent a year learning how powerless I’d been to control it? Could it help a person who is already the thing everyone is working so hard to avoid—being chronically sick—and who is thus already disqualified from the possibility of centenarian status? I wanted to try it, because this stretch of Costa Rica seemed like a tranquil backdrop for relearning how to live well.

The concept of blue zones originated from the work of demographers Gianni Pes and Michel Poulain, who identified Sardinia as having the highest global concentration of men living over 100 years old. Buettner furthered the research by identifying other longevity hotspots and the lifestyle principles they all had in common. He called these shared, pro-longevity habits “The Power 9,” which include moving naturally, eating until you’re only 80% full, connecting to a sense of purpose, and “downshifting” after work or stressful events. Oh, and lots of beans.

Since the popular 2023 Netflix documentary Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones, there has been an explosion of wellness tourism to blue zones, with immersive experiences like this longevity retreat to Ikaria, Greece, making it one of the biggest travel trends of 2024. To offer programming of its own, the Blue Zones organization brought on health coach Céline Vadam to help design retreats in blue zones around the world, which, in addition to Nicoya and Sardinia, include Okinawa, Japan; Ikaria, Greece; and Loma Linda, California.