Jason Holland

Of all the places I’ve visited in Costa Rica, the Nicoya Peninsula is the one that feels most like the frontier. It’s a somewhat isolated region, with mile after mile of untouched coastline along the blue Pacific, craggy hills, vast cattle farms in the interior, and mazes of what are often dirt roads running through forests and fields. It’s also one of the world’s Blue Zones, where researchers have found that locals live longer on average due to a combination of diet, climate, and lifestyle.

It’s easy to miss Monteverde, high in the Tilarán Mountains. There’s only a small sign directing you to turn right off the PanAmerican Highway and begin your slow ascent. You pass through tiny villages along the way. Dairy cows clamber on near-vertical terraced hillsides.

When Michael Allen, 54, joined his wife Connie, 51, for a vacation on Costa Rica’s southern Pacific coast back in 2000, he made a startling discovery. “She had arrived there two weeks before me and had bought some land near the town of Ojochal, which is a hub of expat activity in the region,” says Michael. “I remember saying, ‘What did you do! Are you out of your mind? It’s in the middle of the jungle.’”