I just got back from two weeks in Ontario, during which I renewed my Wilderness Advanced First Aid certification, and spent a little time with family and friends. I don’t know what possessed me to go to Ontario in November! After spending a whole summer of heat and humidity in San Carlos, I finally arranged to go north and take the course.

I was lucky. The weather was unseasonably warm for the most part, but I did manage to see snow, sleet, rain, and the cloudy, windy days typical of November. But I also had warm sunny days too, especially when I was in the south, taking my first aid course.

On my way back I flew directly from Toronto to Phoenix. I expected to have to peel layers off when I got there, but it was surprisingly cool: barely warmer than Toronto.

Back in San Carlos, the days are quite warm and the nights deliciously cool. Sea temperatures have dropped. Today the sea off the shore of San Carlos was 68F (20C). Just three weeks ago the sea was closer to 80F (27C). Although that doesn’t seem a big difference, when you consider that water steals heat from the body 25 times faster than air of the same temperature, it amounts to the difference between a leisurely snorkel and a brisk dip.

The temperature change comes not from the lower sun and cooler days of autumn, but from a shift in the wind pattern. The Summer Monsoon is a Southeast wind that blows warm, tropical surface water into the Gulf. Sea temperatures get high enough to allow one to snorkel for hours without getting chilled. As soon as the monsoon breaks, usually in October, the Northwest winds blow all that lovely, warm water back out to the Pacific, and it is immediately replaced with cooler sub-surface water. The cool water was here all along, just a little deeper than snorkeling depth.

With the cooler water comes the winter fish: sierra mackerel, bonito (a small tuna) and yellowtail (a jack) are all here chasing the schools of herring. Also after the herring are blue-footed boobies, brown pelicans (both year-round residents) and large rafts of the ever-cute eared grebe.

Now that the air is cooler and much drier, it is time to hike the canyons and hill-tops of the Sierra el Aguaje. This is a great time to live here in San Carlos.