The city sits less than five degrees from the equator, and that makes its climate table look very little like the ones we are used to reading. There is no temperature curve: there is a straight line. The only thing that genuinely moves across the twelve columns is rain, and that is the figure to work with.
01 Two degrees in twelve months
The numbers, so the size of the effect is clear. Average highs: 33.0 in January, 34.3 in March, 34.8 in May, 35.1 in August, 33.5 in December. Average lows: 22.1 in January and 22.8 in April and May, with every other month in between. Twelve months moving inside a margin of barely two degrees.
02 Three thousand and seventy millimetres
Here there is variation, though it needs understanding properly. The city receives around 3,070 millimetres a year over 211 rainy days. That second number is the important one: on average it rains on more than half the days of the year, in every month, without exception. There is no dry month. There is a less wet one.
The distribution has two clear ends. The wet stretch runs from October to January: 313.6, 322.9, 358.9 and 320.6 millimetres, with 21, 22, 22 and 18 rainy days. And the good stretch is February and March: 162.9 and 143.4 millimetres, with 12 and 13 days. The difference between December and March is two and a half times the water and nine rainy days.
There is no dry month. There is a month with twelve rainy days and one with twenty-two, and the whole decision lies between those two numbers.
03 The window: February and March
March is the driest month by millimetres — 143.4 — and adds up to 230 hours of sun; February has a little more water, 162.9, but only 12 rainy days, the year's minimum. Either is the right choice, and between them the difference is so small that the price of the ticket decides it.
There is a second criterion that often counts for more than rain: sunshine. Sunshine hours run from 197.2 in September to 239.2 in April, and that difference shows in the photographs and in the general feel of the trip. April and May are, for light, the year's best months, even though it rains considerably more than in March.
04 How a day is organised here
At 34 degrees with high humidity all year round, the strategy does not change with the month: you start early. The first hours are the only comfortable ones for being outdoors and also the ones with the best light. From midday onwards it is worth having an indoor plan, and not for the rain but for the sustained heat.
And a practical note on equatorial rain that changes how you plan: here it rains enormously but for a short while. A twenty-minute downpour and then the sky reopening is normal. That means 22 rainy days in December do not equal 22 lost days: they equal 22 days on which you need something with you to shelter under for half an hour.
05 The verdict
March, with February close behind. They are the only two months of the year that drop below 15 rainy days, and in a place where temperature carries no information, that is literally the only criterion left. If you can also pick the first half of March, better still: it is the driest point of the whole series.
The month to avoid is December, with 358.9 millimetres over 22 days, followed by November. And the underlying conclusion: do not come expecting a dry season, because there is none. Come with footwear that can take a soaking, something light and waterproof in the bag and the idea that rain is part of the place, not part of your bad luck.
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