Nicoya

In 2020, Reserva Conchal partnered with Blue Zones Nicoya to establish a bee yard.

The two camps agree on four blue zones—Sardinia, Okinawa, Nicoya, and Ikaria—but there are some differences.

Luis Rosero-Bixby, an emeritus demographer at the University of Costa Rica who helped declare the blue zone in Nicoya in 2007, recently published a study showing people born after 1930 are no longer living unusually long lives.

But two places did make the cut: the peninsula of Nicoya in Costa Rica in 2007, and the island of Ikaria in Greece in 2008.

She and her husband have lived temporarily in New Orleans, San Francisco and three small beach towns on Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula, among other mini sabbatical locales.