Geography for Dummies Part 2

 

San José is Up!

It can be so much fun to discover how wrong you can be in spite of all kinds of hints and information lurking in your vicinity. Reflecting on my last entry I was so sure that I had emphatically answered the question as to where I physically was. But, there is, after all, nearly always another dimension whether you like it or not isn’t there? I had my whereabouts pinned accurately on the x and y coordinates, please do not be mistaken about me being mistaken about that, but what about the coordinate that goes upwards.

The first evening in San José I welcomely acknowledged the pleasant temperature for sleeping. There was even a comforting need for a very light bed cover on top of the sheet. I thought it might have been just an aberration. It was only after that marvellously energizing first walk in the beautiful sunshine on the day I decided to revive this old blog habit that I commented to Juan Carlos, the owner of the establishment I was staying at, about how surprising it was that the temperature, pleasant though it was, was distinctly not sweatily tropical. I really couldn’t understand it I explained to him. The physical geography for dummies course had taught me that as you get nearer to the equator the temperature rises. This was a temperature decidedly less confrontational than Santo Domingo or Fort Lauderdale and they were many miles to the north. What was going on? The world-travelled Juan Carlos cast a glance in the direction of the unmissable surrounding mountains saying, “That is because we are higher”. What a fun bombshell moment for me. The explosion was all the erroneous assumptions I had made and evidence that I had chosen to completely ignore. Honestly, I had seen the mountains just like anybody else but, rather like the natural instinct of the ego to think that the world begins with “me”, I had been thinking that wherever you start out from the starting point has to be pretty much close to sea level, surely! I had even come down to San José from a heck of a height in the aeroplane!  I had ignored the possibility that the mountains I had been observing could have been anywhere on that vertical z-axis. What a concept – I certainly hadn’t noticed it in any of Jim and Jim’s guidebooks  and I had obviously not yet taken in that altitude is just as variable as anything else from a recent lesson of pretty severe altitude sickness in the Andes.

Quite a brilliant concept though the perfect thermostat. Bit hot, go a little higher. Too cold, move down the slope a bit. Here we are at nearly 4,000 feet. Not high by Peruvian standards but certainly higher than anything in England and Wales. In my opinion the thermostat is adjusted about right: warm to hot in the day and cooler at night.  It might even be the perfect ambiental compromise for heat and mosquitoes: I haven’t seen or heard one of those yet.

I am told they have just two seasons here and although we are still in the northern hemisphere, as we enter November we shall be strangely welcoming summer and when the dry season turns to rainy in May the season reverts to winter. It does rain a lot but in general the downpours are usually short and sharp and in my experience nearly always in the late afternoon or evening. Enough of the dreary winter I say, though, roll on summer!

Would you have got the hint?
(You can click on the photos too, by the way)

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