Rob-Rivera.com

Panama and the Weather

If there’s one thing anyone would want to stay in Panama for, it’s the weather. It’s absolutely awesome… and haywire. I’ve been looking out the window and within 20 minutes it’s been really sunny, partially sunny, cloudy, sunny again and now it’s returned to cloudy. It’s probably going to be sunny again by the time I finish this writing; so is the weather here. You never really know what you’re gonna get once you step out of your abode but rest assured that it will always make things interesting… Have you ever heard of that sun that could give you Cancer if you stepped out into the open and exposed yourself to it for more than 15 minutes? Well, he hangs out here every day from 10AM ’til around 1PM, when it almost surely begins to rain. And the rain here’s no ordinary rain, either…

The thing about the weather in Panama is that there’s never mild weather or lukewarm weather or any other type of pussy weather derivative: it’s either very fucking sunny, or very fucking rainy. And when it rains, don’t expect to be able to take your ass anywhere because it’s not going to happen; one of the things that our drunk-at-the-time city planner came up with while designing our road structure was, like a sick joke to the future generations of Panamanians, to model the roads like a spaghetti bowl: some of them are long and curvy, others are stuck together to make bigger strands and others are abruptly cut in random fashion, causing a bunch of dead ends with no purpose whatsoever. And once you pour some sauce in there then it all turns into a mess… rain’s our Prego. If it rains hard (and it always does) for more than 15 minutes then there will be traffic jams all over the city because half the roads are flooded by this point. African-Jungle flooded. You-can’t-see-the-roads flooded. This is where all of those overpriced 4×4’s you’ll see here come in handy only if there wasn’t so many traffic jams and sidewalks too little for a car that big to drive on them… what a great investment!

Electrical storms are not as frequent as there is really thick rain. They’re both always a great show to watch, though… In contrast, when it’s sunny you’ll wish you were at the beach and not in plain clothes walking on the scorching pavement trying to get to work. Of course, when the nearest beach is only 20 minutes away from the city then it’s pretty tempting to drop everything and enjoy yourself, bitch, and that’s left to the discretion of the tourist, I suppose. The roads towards the interior of the country (a.k.a where the fun is) have been tended to and fixed as of late, giving you somewhat easy sailing up until Coronado county, which is around an hour away from the city; after that then it’s a free-for-all, Kosovo-quality savage land when it comes to the road, where you’ll find yourself dodging holes the size of small countries all the way to the border. Now, these roads are full-on highway where the connecting patches between towns are pitch black… venturing out at night with roads like those is always a risky proposition, but when you take in the crazy random rain showers we’re known for then THAT’s real danger. Back in the city, though, there’s more danger in getting pissed at the traffic jams rather than crashing to your doom… even if there are more car crashes as a result of a rain shower.

The summer months begin just a little after November and they end at around June (exact science this ain’t, but it’s July right now and the cloudy days and rain showers come aplenty. Plan accordingly. The weather can be very fucking hot to a mild cold, but as hot as it could get it’s still not worthy of walking around the city in your pristine jungle explorer gear. Seriously. Every time I see someone with shorts, those crazy Robocop climbing shoes/sandals, a bucket hat and a kangaroo pouch walking down Via España or Avenida Balboa, places where there’s so much pavement and progress it’s ridiculous, I just sigh. Someone misinformed these dorks. The pre-conceived notion Panamanians have of these tourists (and this is just me remembering what I hear and what they tell me, mind you) is that they were told by their government, travel agents and other bearers of vital travel information that Panama was nothing more than a jungle where savages swung in vines from tree to tree and ate babies. Upon arriving to their 5-star hotel they realize that upon walking out they meet other tourists in the same predicament scratching themselves on the head because they had their hiking boots and whips ready for a wild jungle adventure and instead are stuck in a concrete jungle one.

During the winter months it’s sunny as hell during the mornings, weather that changes drastically in the afternoons to an eerie “alien invasion”-type cloudy skies that are usually followed by crazy-ridiculous rain showers while Godzilla and Mothra battle in the background. During the summer months though there’s not a drop of water falling in the sky… incidentally we take the month of February (just like most countries) to do our Carnivals, where there’s a lot of frickin’ water dropped on our sinning souls for 4 days straight. There’s no snow, our first hailstorm in the past gazillion years happened just over a month ago and there is no Fall season. We pretty much just have “summer” and “lots of fucking rain” seasons. In either halfs of the year there’s still lots to do both in the city and abroad (for tourists, anyway) so for an inherently awesome experience it’s worth the effort to swing by. It’s affordable, different and you’re guaranteed to have a good time, rain or shine.

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