January 16, 2017 - Opposite Seasons

January 16, 2017

Opposite Seasons

Let me give you a little geography review.  All of North America is in the Northern Hemisphere.  Most of South America is in the Southern Hemisphere.  Colombia and Venezuela, which are on the Caribbean Coast, are in the Northern Hemisphere.  Through the heart of South America is the invisible line called the Equator.  That is how Ecuador got its name.  Ecuador means equator in Spanish.  Ecuador is split by the Equator.  Bolivia is south of the Equator.

What does that mean?  Well, it means we have opposite seasons in Bolivia.  While the Northern Hemisphere, including the USA, Canada, and Europe, are enjoying summer, the Southern Hemisphere is in Winter.  When the weather in the US starts to get cold, we will be entering summer in Bolivia.

Bolivia is not too far south of the Equator.  It is about as far south of the Equator as the Caribbean is as far north of the Equator.  Neither gets very cold in winter.

What you can expect in a Bolivian winter is milder days.  The nights might slip into the 60s (jacket or long-sleeve weather), and during the day it is in the low 80s.  Occasionally it can get colder, like today.  I woke up to a temperature of 52, clouds, and a stiff breeze.  It felt cold.  We are expecting this weather for about 3 more days.  Then it will be back to normal.

Like in Texas, where the daffodils will often bloom in February, or even in January, Santa Cruz, Bolivia has things in bloom.  The grass isn’t growing and a select few trees have lost their leaves.  But spring is not that far away.  It has been nearly 30 years since I experienced a Bolivian spring, but I remember the trees were every color of the rainbow.

When Texas, and the rest of North America enters Autumn, and the leaves are turning pretty colors, Santa Cruz, Bolivia rapidly enters summer time.  The summer here gets hot.  Not long ago I looked up an article about the weather in Santa Cruz and it showed that 95 is about as hot as it gets in the summer.  There is a reason for that.  Santa Cruz, Bolivia is not too far from the Equator and that means days and nights are about the same all year long, roughly 12 hours each.  In winter the sun starts to set around 5:30 and in the summer around 6:30. In Texas, the days are long and there is more time to build up the heat, so it never cools enough at night.  Here it cools off, so days are at most in the low 90s. I remember from the past that there always seemed to be a breeze at night.  My memory is proving accurate.

After Christmas, the rainy season begins.  Probably 3 out of 5 days it can rain.  The rains always help to cool things off, but brings a lot of humidity.  Things never seem to get dry during this time of year.

On this cold winter day of temperatures in the 50s, the sun just struggled to push through the clouds.  I love winter.

It is funny now that I am rewriting this six months later, on a cold winter day in Texas, with the sky overcast and a chill wind from the north. 

Something I must add that I didn’t say the first time I wrote this.  Weather in Bolivia is contingent on where you live.  Santa Cruz is east of the Andes, in the tropical lowlands.  It can get very hot in the summer.  Much of Bolivia, such as La Paz, Sucre, and Cochabamba are in the Andes.  They are in more desert climate.  It doesn’t rain much and the sun always seems to be shining, but being in the mountains they never get very hot.  A thirty-minute plane ride can take you to an entirely different world.

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