You don’t have to live here to have a long life, but it helps

I meditated as soon as I woke this morning. Beginners like me can start by counting backwards from 100 to one – you’d be surprised how quickly your mind wanders from such a seemingly simple task. Then I stare at a mango tree. Properly stare. For days, I’ve learnt to be present, in the moment, this moment. So when I’m done with the tree I move my focus to the clouds beyond it, where a white elephant is rising on its hind legs, no, hang on, now it’s a turtle paddling its flippers.

Poolside at Surf Synergy.Credit:

Vultures I hadn’t noticed patrol the thermals (near the elephant/ turtle) – and scarlet macaws fly over the rice paddies below, and the orchard of coconuts, mango, starfruit and banana trees next to my balcony. When I’m done sucking the marrow out of this moment, I skim a copy of Peter Attia’s The Science & Art of Longevity, which someone left on the chaise longue beside the pool. I reckon I can make it to 97.

You don’t have to come all the way to Costa Rica to fix your life but … it probably helps. For starters, it’s one of five zones on Earth where people live longest – just being here at all adds a few months to my expiry date, surely? And here – at an upscale version of a 1960s surf commune built on a hillside overlooking both the Pacific Ocean and the produce for many of my meals growing in permaculture gardens – the outside world hardly seems to exist.

Surf Synergy offers week-long surf and wellness retreats in the sort of private sanctuary where you might expect to find a celebrity in hiding. I’m not one of them, but my new commune friends are definitely escaping something: mostly the chaos of hectic professional lives in the big cities of Trump America. Denver entrepreneur Rich Naha built this place after he came to Costa Rica for a holiday during the COVID-19 pandemic and decided to become a beach bum … at 51.

Surfing Costa Rica.Credit:

“My dream was to surf, and simplify,” he tells me. “And create a place for other people looking to do the same.”

We’re not far from Costa Rica’s capital, San Jose (a 90-minute drive), on the country’s Pacific Coast. Costa Rica accounts for just 0.03 per cent of the world’s land mass but is home to more than 5 per cent of the planet’s biodiversity. On the drive in, I see five-metre crocodiles sunbaking on a river bank; hear the screams of howler monkeys – the loudest of any land animal, their call can reach 140 decibels – and am hypnotised by my driver’s story about the three-metre boa constrictor that accosted his chihuahua on his back porch the night before.

Casa Cielo – the retreat’s 1000-square-metre villa, which holds up to 24 guests – offers a heck of a haven. Guests stay in suites here (and bungalows), sharing meals in an enormous outside dining room with retractable glass doors that looks across an infinity pool, a hot tub and a fire pit to the ocean below.

Yoga classes are held each morning at seven; they’re not mandatory, but I’m soon entrapped by the allure of slow, easy stretches in an open-air pavilion scented with frangipani. Days are spent mostly on the ocean – the retreat accesses six beaches, with some of the country’s most reliable waves, and Costa Rica’s most experienced surf coaches.

Morning yoga.Credit:

Occasionally, I head to outlying islands on a stand-up paddleboard as a local population of Olive Ridley turtles pass under me (the west coast of Costa Rica is the world’s most important nesting site for these turtles). Pelicans surf the waves beside me – flying so close to the surface that I keep waiting for a high-speed crash. Another day I hike deep into jungle to swim beneath a waterfall.

But for all its natural beauty (though nearby tourist hot-spot, Jaco, does have its share of eyesores), each day I can’t wait to return to my casa in the sky. I like best that my fellow guests behave as if we’ve all travelled here together, quickly forming a bond that builds over long, slow three-course dinners under the stars.

The retreat is near the town of Jaco.Credit: iStock

The ’60s ain’t dead: Utopian enlightenment is available to those who make it to this modern-day commune. You just have to come to Costa Rica, man.

THE DETAILS

STAY
Surf Synergy offers seven-night all-inclusive stays from Saturday to Saturday including all meals, surf coaching, yoga, ice-baths and breathwork sessions from $US3250 ($5140) a person. See surfsynergy.com

FLY
Delta Air Lines flies from Australia to Los Angeles, and then direct to San Jose. See delta.com

MORE
visitcostarica.com

The writer travelled courtesy of Surf Synergy.