Most expats I know in Boquete look forward to summer here; the dry time. I am a contrarian, I loath the dry season with it’s periodic winds and blasting sun. After almost forty years living in the desert I came here to rehydrate. In most of the “green season” a Costa Rican marketing term for the wet season, it only rains a short part of the day but clouds tend to mask the sun keeping it much cooler and moister.
People seem to forget we are high, in my case thirteen hundred meters above sea level and close to the equator; about eight degrees north. This makes the sun brutal and makes this a lousy place for Scandinavians or other pink skinned people like me. Whether the clouds are there or the sun blasting, people need to take precautions or they will be visiting the dermatologists of David to get cancerous lesions removed. Wear a hat, wear long pants, wear long sleeves and wear sun screen. The clouds, much as I love them only reduce the visible light, the the UV that devastates our skin.
The most evil climatic event in Boquete is the wind. The winds of Boquete not in any tourist brochure nor real estate sales brochure. Whether you are in Bajo Boquete, the town, Alto Boquete or in hills around Boquete when the winds come, you know it. Sometimes they only last a day, sometimes a week, one year I recall three weeks. I would rather be stuck in a tropical downpour or even a blizzard then the winds of Boquete for three weeks and yet I am here. There is no escaping mother nature and her whims of fancy.
The winds bring the dry season, they shift the flow of clouds and are a seasonal event. The rain becomes occasional Bajareque, otherwise known as the misty rain from the north. The Bajareque produces incredible rainbows and keeps parts of the area wet through the dry season. The winds, do not seem to bother the Leprechauns who play under the rainbows. Personally I like the moisture, but when we have Bajareque in my part of Jaramillo, it means the winds from the north are blowing it over the mountains from the Caribbean.
The geography here has taken a bit of time for accommodation. The Caribbean is to the north, the Pacific to the south, Costa Rica to the west and Panama City to the east. The sun sets not by extinguishing itself daily in the vast Pacific Ocean but by dropping over the mountains into Costa Rica. Where they gain a little more time, about an hour, so they are in a different time zone, UTC -6, vs. Panama UTC -5.
So much for the wind which is making me a bit crazy today and the sun which is shining too brightly. As you can tell I must be edgy just taking the time to write this bit of fancy.
