Today is like the end of August in Santiago, Chile. The high will be 87 degrees. Luckily for us, we are arriving in the early morning at the airport next Friday and being immediately whisked away (at least its immediately in my imagination…I’m sure there will be an abundance of waiting around in the arrivals area while a meaningful component of the 930 Viking passengers, all wandering around with their luggage with little red Viking tags on them and with little red Viking stickers on their chests like good little kindergarteners) to the 20 degree cooler environs of the port city of Valparaiso. That is where our Viking Jupiter ship, built in 2019, sits awaiting our arrival. This passage from Chile to Argentina through either or all of the Drake Passage, the Straights of Magellan and around Cape Horn (the specifics of which route I will learn while we are threading our way through the archipelago at the bottom of the world) will be the last of Viking’s season. March is the shoulder month between summer and fall in that part of the world and it is safe to say that from everything I have read and heard, you do not want to be making this passage through these waters from April through June if you can avoid it. This particular route has become so popular that I’m sure Viking would love to squeeze an extra passage into the calendar, but I’m equally sure that prudence, defined as keeping customers away from 100-foot waves, means they will start heading north along the Brazilian coast. I am not well-informed about the logistics of Viking operations, but I imagine they will be heading for the balmier waters of the Caribbean and the Gulf of Trump.
Meanwhile, back on the hilltop, I note that our high temperature for today is headed for 83 degrees, which is pretty balmy itself. While we are past Groundhog Day, so one might claim to be in early spring, in North America, we have technically not shifted out of winter yet. I am like the old NYC police force, I have a winter uniform and a summer uniform and when I choose to switch over from one to the other is my personal declaration of the seasonal changeover. I do have one degree of flexibility in that indicator and it has to do with tops and bottoms. That is, I switch shorts and long pants and long-sleeve and short-sleeve t-shirts. This whole shoulder-season trip going from the Northern Hemisphere to the Southern Hemisphere is challenging. I spent many a packing day pondering these issues in the heyday of my work travel days, but there it was just a matter of what suit weight to pack since shorts and t-shirts were not the issue. I have watched the weather apps religiously and determined that we are mostly going to be in cool shipboard fall weather that will be in the high 50’s and low 60s (perfect by my standards) with only a short stint in the warmer climes of Santiago and Buenos Aires at either end of the journey. To begin with, those cities vary significantly from the weather at the southern-most reaches of Tierra del Fuego. The confusion is just exacerbated by the length of the trip, which is 18 days. That means I cannot see the far reaches of the trip on the app since it only goes out 15 days. In fact, at this moment I cannot quite see out to the weather in Punta Arenas, the southern Chilean city, much less Ushuaia or the Falkland Islands. For those and beyond, all I can do is extrapolate.
Today I have taken halfway seasonal measures and while I am keeping on my long pants, I have shifted officially from long to short-sleeved t-shirt. We have our pot-buying excursion (pot as in ceramics, not as in Ganja), so its sort of a gardening day on the hilltop with about fifteen small and medium-sized pots waiting to be planted by yours truly while Kim is off at doctors appointments and Buddy is wondering why he has to have his butt shaved by the groomer every month. I could probably have gone full-summer mode with shorts today, but I notice that it is expected to cool down again before we leave next week, so I don’t want to jump the gun. I have made a command decision based on some of my old fashion notions of proper attire while traveling and my weather outlook that I will only be wearing long pants on this trip. I have literally left the cargo shorts out of the suitcase and other than swim trunks and a pair of gym shorts for use on the lower decks of the ship, especially on sea days, I will be seen only in long pants. I know we live in a more casual cultural moment and certainly in a more casual cultural state of California, but I just feel better and less frat-boy by just making that one concession to propriety. For the same reason and because I do not anticipate any scorching hot days, I am also leaving the ball caps behind. I do have a few long and short-sleeve t-shirts in case I want to loosen up, but generally I expect to be wearing a collared shirt every day. I just feel and (I think) look better dressed like that and its not as though either long pants or collared shirts make me any less comfortable. This day and age with modern fabrics, I’m not so sure there is any difference in comfort with any of these articles of clothing. Let’s face it, everything stretches and gives as need be unless you are really a curmudgeon who refuses to buy new-age fabrics.
When I go out into the garden today to plant my new pots, it will be the perfect weather. It will be 80 degrees with 17% humidity and a 16 mph wind from the mountains (which means it will be warm and dry). I can see the breeze blowing outside through the trees and it is as soothing as it sounds. The rain last week has made the garden especially verdant and everything looks healthy and anxious to get onto its 2025 growing season. About the only things that have not started to bud just yet are the Crepe Myrtle’s and the Coral and Silk trees. Everything else is off to an early start. That gives me something to look forward to when I return from South America. We will be into late March by then and everything will be popping throughout the garden. it will undoubtedly be a great welcome home present for us and Natasha, who will watching Buddy for the duration will enjoy every bit of it as she always does. From the look of the weather app, we are picking a good time to be away since there seems to be a late rainy season on its way. Next week looks to have some rain and that continues into mid-March at least. All that says to this gardener is that our return will be all the more verdant on the hilltop.
Despite the year-round temperate climate here in San Diego, there still is a summertime seasonality. It’s just that at the extremes, like is the case this year, it can run from February through late October with no problem. That’s right, I would say that our weather is 75% summery with the other 25% some blend of fall and spring. I have only seen a few days of winter ever on this hilltop, though I do actually have a picture of the one snowfall I’ve seen that lasted two hours early one morning about ten years ago. Given our natural propensity to like summer, the best of summer is summertime in February.