Quick. What did you have for lunch a week ago today?

Don’t remember? Now, what if I asked you what you had for lunch 50 years ago? That’s essentially what we ask of centenarians whom we interview. Unlocking the secrets of longevity requires us to know what they’ve done most of their lives, as opposed to what they’re doing today. How else can we know what Nicoyans ate, or how they socialized, shed stress or used medicinal plants? How else can we know their habits?

One way is research. In a San Jose library, I dug up a 50 year old account of Nicoya written by an American geographer named Phillip Wagner. In it, he described a typical day:

The modern Nicoyan is still a subsistence farmer; most of what he uses for his daily needs come from the same age-old sources, and most of what he does is done in the same age-old ways. The day begins before sunrise. The family meets for black coffee and cold tortillas. The time from dawn to 8 o'clock is for chores and the beginning of the day's work. Work may end on very hot days at 12 or 2 in the afternoon. The midday meal begins with a pot of soup in which there are a few bits of meat, boiled plantains or yucca and perhaps a few greens. The evening meal is simpler, since the custom is to spend the afternoon in idleness, and appetites are less hearty.

Wagner went on to describe what grew in people’s gardens which offered a few more clues to Nicoya’s diet of longevity. They grew yucca, ayote and tiquisque root and three types of plantains. Though he notes that people ate wildly exotic-sounding fruits like guacimo, jicaro, anano, guayaba and zapote, and sweet lemon, most of these could not have been an important part of their diet because they ripen only once a year, in the early dry season. papaya and citrus fruit could be a more important part of the Nicoyan diet because they grow year-round.

And like other longevity diets around the world (especially the Seventh Day Adventists' diet) the diet was bland. “Chiles are highly prized in the garden but are rarely used in cooking.” Wagner noted. Nicoyans did, however, lightly season their food with oregano, basil and ayote,

There are two other things I noticed from Wagner’s account. Though Europeans brought vegetables like onions and cabbage to Costa Rica, they did not grow well in Nicoya’s hot, dry environment. Instead, most of the plants that became established in the peninsula under the Spaniards originated in Africa or Asia. Among them were sugar, rice, coffee, African yams and some varieties of bananas. Milk and cheese figured prominently in the diet. And there are two surprises which go against everything we hear about a healthy diet: people frequently ate pork and rarely ate salads. Leafy greens were fed mainly to the pigs.

But what were the people really like? To answer this, I struck off into one of Nicoya’s last hinterlands, the mountains near the village of Juan Diaz. This journey, I reasoned, would give me insight into how centenarians lived before the progress brought roads, electricity and the American junk culture.

My guide was an affable pure-blooded Chortega Indian named Pablo Zuniga, who today works as a Costa Rican policeman. He grew up near Juan Diez and agreed to take me to his childhood home where his grandparents still live. He assured me I’d get a glimpse of Nicoya’s past.

We turned off the main highway and snaked up a rocky, rutted track flanked by dry forests and bean fields. When the road so steepened that our truck tires spun out, we pulled over and began a yet steeper uphill trek, this time on foot. It was mid-afternoon. The sun beat down hard; sweat dripped-dribbled down my back.

We arrived at Pablo’s childhood home. It was a simple shack make of rough-cut boards and wooden shutters, built on a hillside overlooking he eastern half of Nicoya. Outside, I saw a garden, corn fields, and behind the house, an old sugar cane press. Smoke puffed out a tin chimney and chickens clucked in the yard; an axe stuck in a chopping block. Nothing about the scene suggested the 20th century had arrived.

Inside, a pot of soup boiled on a wood-burning stove and cool mountain breeze blew through open windows, Pablo’s energetic 93-year-old grandfather invited us to sit down while his grandmother poured us a glass of cool water from ancient Chorotega jugs. An aunt and uncle, who were in their 50’s had walked over the mountain to stop by for a visit.

I took the opportunity to ask how a typical day unfolded. Pablo’s uncle told me that he woke at 5:00 am every morning, washed his beans and tortillas down with black coffee and went into the fields for work. He quit at noon, ate soup, took rest and then did household chores before dinner. Since they had no electricity, bedtime came soon after the sun set. Life here was exactly as Warner had described it a half century ago.

But was this a happy life? This was a question that Wagner didn’t bother to ask. “I’m content to find some shade under a tree and peel an orange,” Pablo’s aunt told me. “We have enough to do so that the devil does not mettle in our business, but not so much we’re stressed. We’re tranquil.”

Perhaps this is the biggest clue after all.

Live Large,

Dan