Originally Posted by
kitkat77
It's desert, but ocean. Plus a microclimate like SFO, with the ocean current keeping a cloudbank onshore for most of the winter.
So, really humid and misty all winter (June-Sept), but no rain. I found the temperature to be quite pleasant, at 60-65 degrees, but the locals think it's *freezing* and are bundled up in heavy coats, scarves, etc. It never rains - they don't even have gutters, or sewage drains in the streets.
Summer is sunny, 80s, but still really humid.
It's also very polluted. It's amazing some of the cars and buses that they manage to keep running.
Huh, a humid desert. Odd.
It'd be interesting to go back in the summer, as I really got such a weird impression of the weather being so chilly being so close to the equator.
As a child of the U.S. west coast, I hate humidity with a passion, but the humidity didn't bother me in Lima. I read recently that humans don't have comfort issues with relative humidity so much as issues with the dewpoint. A high dewpoint (above 70 degrees) is what most people find uncomfortable, regardless of the actual ambient temperature. Obviously, the temperature in Lima (around 60) wasn't high enough to cause a dewpoint over 70, which would explain why I didn't feel terribly uncomfortable--it was gloomy but, for the most part, pleasant. If it's humid (and with a dewpoint over 70) in the summer, though, I might not enjoy the climate so much.
We had nothing but crystal clear weather in the Andes, though, as well as along the coast south of Nazca. But sure enough, as soon as we started getting close to Lima, the clouds started appearing, and by the time we got to the beach towns south of town (with the little shanty huts--what are those, summer cabins or something?), it was gray and socked in.
Originally Posted by
AA_EXP09
SIN as a place close to the equator isn't that bad (though then again, the longest I have spent outside there was maybe 3 hours.)
I've spent a sum of about a week in Singapore in the fall. It's not terribly unpleasant, but it's definitely a tropical, warm, humid climate. Lima, on the other hand, felt like being somewhere along the latitude of Washington and not 10 degrees from the equator.