Living Healthy to 100

I recently found this article about centenarians living on the Nicoya Peninsula, one of the worlds few Blue Zones.  There are three other regions that have been identified as Blue Zones - Okinawa, Sardinia and Loma Linda, California, where people live longer than anywhere in the world.  Check out this great article and video below about Panchita Castillo.  For me it's not about living to be old, but living and staying young.  Panchita is great inspiration.

Living Healthy to 100

By Dan Buettner, AARP Magazine

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.

Read the full story here 

Check out video of Panchita here

Another Happy Story

AFP: Costa Rica tops happiness, 'green living' poll

SAN JOSE (AFP) — Costa Rica is the happiest place on earth, and one of the most environmentally friendly, according to a new survey by a British non-governmental group.

The New Economics Foundation looked at 143 countries that are home to 99 percent of the world's population and devised an equation that weighed life expectancy and people's happiness against their environmental impact.

By that formula, Costa Rica is the happiest, greenest country in the world, just ahead of the Dominican Republic.

Latin American countries did well in the survey, occupying nine of the top 10 spots.

Australia scored third place, but other major Western nations did poorly, with Britain coming in at 74th place and the United States at 114th.

The New Economics Foundation's measurements found Costa Ricans have a life expectancy of 78.5 years, and 85 percent of the country's residents say they are happy and satisfied with their lives.

Those figures, taken along with the fact that Costa Rica has a small "ecological footprint," combined to push the small nation to the top of the list.

A 2006 New Economics Foundation study designated Vanuatu the world's happiest nation, with Costa Rica at second place.

Sociologist Andrea Fonseca said Costa Rica gives its citizens the "tools" to be happy, but cautioned that happiness cannot be calculated just by looking at life expectancy and environmental practices.

She added that the country's rise to the top of the Happy Planet Index "has a lot to do with social imagination."

Costa Rica has a peaceful reputation because it does not have an army, and is also known for its protected ecological zones and national slogan "pure life," she said.

Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
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AFP

Happiness is...Living Green in Costa Rica

Happiness is...living green in Costa Rica | Entertainment | Reuters

By Barbara Lewis

LONDON (Reuters Life!) - Costa Rica is very nearly paradise, not just for holiday-makers lounging on its beaches, but for its citizens who are extremely satisfied with their lot and also have a tiny carbon footprint.

The combination has earned the central American country first place in a new Happy Planet Index (HPI) published on Monday.

While leaders of the developed world attending G8 talks in Italy worry away at economic indicators like Gross Domestic Product (GDP), deflation and their implications for economic recovery, the second edition of the HPI lauds alternative standards that provide a new twist on the old adage that wealth does not buy happiness.

Costa Rica stands out for the highest levels of reported life satisfaction, a long life expectancy of 78.5 years and because 99 percent of its energy comes from renewable sources.

Latin American nations generally fare well, bagging nine out of 10 of the top spots and Sub-Saharan Africa performs very badly, with Zimbabwe taking bottom place. It scores 16.6 out of 100, compared with Costa Rica's HPI total of 76.1, according to an advance copy of the report.

Somewhere in between are the world's wealthiest economies.

The United States is placed 114th out of the 143 nations surveyed, with an HPI result of 30.7 and was found to be "greener and happier" 10 years ago than today -- as were China and India, ranked respectively 20th and 35th, with scores of 57.1 and 53.

Read the full story here

WWF - Turtle Conservation in Junquillal

Junquillal beach on Costa Rica’s Pacific coastline is one of the country’s most important nesting beaches for leatherback turtles. But because the beach is not a protected area, illegal egg harvesting is a major problem.

To reduce the number of poached leatherback nests, WWF is developing alternative income sources for the local community, such as from ecotourism and the production and marketing of handicrafts. Community members are also involved in monitoring the beaches, and the construction and operation of a marine turtle hatchery, where eggs are brought in and protected until the hatchlings are released.


Background
Junquillal beach, located in Guanacaste province, Costa Rica, was recently discovered by biologist Gabriel Francia, to be among the most important nesting sites of Pacific leatherbacks (Dermochelys coriacea) in the country. Francia, who is now project leader, found there were up to 50 nests per year between 2004 and 2006.

However, the only relationship local residents had with the turtles was the illegal collection of eggs for sale or consumption. Rampant nest poaching meant that no leatherback hatchling reached the sea, despite regular nesting efforts year after year. Junquillal has no protected area status.

In 2005, WWF initiated a conservation project in Junquillal Beach, to improve the survival outlook for leatherbacks and other marine turtle species.

The bottom-line approach is the establishment of a relationship between sea turtle conservation and improved quality of life for coastal communities. In order to engage the community, heads of families and teachers were invited to an environmental education workshop that stimulated their curiosity and critical thinking about natural resources of the schoolyards and beaches.

The positive response to this activity led to the establishment of the environmental education programme, which has involved schools from Junquillal and other nearby beaches. The work continues to employ local, provincial or national resources to the greatest extent possible, stimulates conservation by the community, respects the community work pace, and displays creativity in adapting to emerging needs. WWF is facilitating the implementation of a Community Livelihoods Improvement Plan in Junquillal.

Click here to read the entire article

New York Times Article on Costa Rica

Op-Ed Columnist - (No) Drill, Baby, Drill - NYTimes.com

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: April 11, 2009

(No) Drill, Baby, Drill


Sailing down Costa Rica’s Tempisque River on an eco-tour, I watched a crocodile devour a brown bass with one gulp. It took only a few seconds. The croc’s head emerged from the muddy waters near the bank with the footlong fish writhing in its jaws. He crunched it a couple of times with razor-sharp teeth and then, with just the slightest flip of his snout, swallowed the fish whole. Never saw that before.

These days, visitors can still see amazing biodiversity all over Costa Rica — more than 25 percent of the country is protected area — thanks to a unique system it set up to preserve its cornucopia of plants and animals. Many countries could learn a lot from this system.

More than any nation I’ve ever visited, Costa Rica is insisting that economic growth and environmentalism work together. It has created a holistic strategy to think about growth, one that demands that everything gets counted. So if a chemical factory sells tons of fertilizer but pollutes a river — or a farm sells bananas but destroys a carbon-absorbing and species-preserving forest — this is not honest growth. You have to pay for using nature. It is called “payment for environmental services” — nobody gets to treat climate, water, coral, fish and forests as free anymore.

read the entire story here

Wall Street Ledgend Henry Kaufman to Invest in Costa Rica

Costa Rica newspaper: A.M. Costa Rica: Your English language daily news source

Wall Street legend Kaufman eyes investment market here
Special to A.M. Costa Rica

The latest entrant to the Costa Rican real estate market is Wall Street's Henry Kaufman, famous since 1957 when he took over the largest bond specialist unit of the New York Stock Exchange.

He follows such famous names as Mel Gibson, Steve Case of America Online, Madonna, Danny Devito, one of the famous princes of Saudi Arabia, the Chinese premier who is investing $300 million, Amazon, Proctor & Gamble and Intel, which invested $900 million in its manufacturing operations.

Kaufman is known among the insiders in the financial community as a genius at contrarian investing. During the 1970s downturn in New York City he was the buyer of last resort for Con Edison bonds, which resulted in huge gains. Kaufman was buying Con Edison Bonds at 30 percent of face value when the city was told no help was coming from the federal government to keep the lights on in New York.

Of course the bonds never defaulted, and the returns were in mega millions to Kaufman.

Associates say that Kaufman believes that Costa Rica will become a huge market for retirees who want a lifestyle in this country where the weather in the major market of the Central Valley is always springtime, similar to Southern California.

He also is said to believe the cost of living and medical care,
which is up to world standards in the private hospitals, is a fraction of the costs in the U. S. and Europe and that the 55-and-older senior retirement communities, assisted living and even nursing care will propel the growth of Costa Rica to double digit gross national product during the next 20 years.

Kaufman wants in while the crisis has opened opportunities that have never existed in the last 10 years of one of the hottest real estate markets in the world, associates say.

Kaufman was the largest shareholder of Apple Bank of New York along with many other holdings. He was the financial controller of all of the $320 million Maurice Kanbar received for selling Skyy Vodka and created $190 million in additional profits from this account. One of the investments was buying 32 percent of downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma, at distress prices starting in 2005. Tulsa is one of the few cities that has weathered the U.S. real estate crisis and actually has increased in value. He also was the funding source of capital for Heine Herzog (Mutual Shares which merged with Franklin Templeton), the largest over-the-counter marketmaker in the U. S..

Kaufman bought buildings in Soho at $30 square foot in the distress times of the 70s and became a legend in value investing when the market climbed to $200 a square foot,

He also purchased the East West Natural Food Macrobiotic restaurant where luminaries like Gloria Swanson, Jane Fonda, John Lennon and Yoko Ono often came to dine.

Costa Rica is his latest interest, major news is expected. Angela Jimenez, a well-known appraiser with Orbit Costa Rica, said she is now in discussions with Alberto Rampoldi of the Avalon development about one of Kaufman's latest ideas.