• Season of the Curved Tides (January-February): The ocean waves come in with scalloped edges, leaving the sand on the beach with ripples. It’s beautiful! (See the photo above for an idea.)

• La Temporada de la Neblina, Fog Season (February or anytime as late as May): Starting around Carnavál and continuing for a few weeks, the cold ocean air meets the warm land and….our building disappears, as does Ice Box Hill and many other landmarks, for a good portion of the morning.

• Season of the Crying Screens, in May-June, after the heat of summer begins and before the rains start. We get condensation of salty ocean air on our window screens.

• La Temporada de los Candidatas, the season of the PARADES!!! (May): Two kinds of candidates: political and royal. The royals are the fun ones—girls (and sometimes boys) from all over the metro area, who want to be queen or king of their school. They walk the malecón, the plazuela, and the Golden Zone collecting donations, usually accompanied by their court if they’re teenagers, and by their families if they’re primary school kids. When the little girls wear nice dresses, boy then am I a supporter of their cause! Parades of course accompany the campaigns of both kinds of candidates. Parades include multiple live bands (not marching but riding), cool cars, loads of balloons, horn honking, and sometimes fireworks. The political campaigns include the standard posters, bumper stickers, t-shirts, etc., and their parades, unfortunately, include the loudspeaker campaign speeches.

• Season of the Panzas–or Panzones! (July-October): If you are walking the malecon, walking to the market, or basically just standing outside, beware of the bare bellies! Men of all shapes and sizes seem to quite enjoy the air conditioning they achieve by rolling up their shirts and exposing their mid-sections. Unfortunately, six pack abs are few and far between! This is also the season to carry a wash cloth or small towel–sweat rag season. A handkerchief will NOT be sufficient. 🙂

• Septi-Hambre, Hungry September: The month when those who serve the tourist trade complain because there are neither national nor international tourists around.

• La Temporada de Venezia, The Season of Venice (August and September): This is when you need a gondola to get your son to school, or to go grocery shopping. MUST wear waterproof shoes and shorts, as streets are flooded at least 1/2 meter deep and more in places.

• Necklace on the Bay Season (September or October through April or so): Open season on shrimp! US$4/kilo and even cheaper, higher for the really giant ones. You can get shrimp any time of year, but the legal shrimping season is now, so you can get fresh not frozen shrimp now. Mmmm. Our fleet is the biggest in Latin America. Opening day of the “veda” is one of my favorites. The shrimp boats all leave port, and in the darkness of night you see the lighted boats forming a beautiful necklace around the bay. Very difficult to capture on film, but incredibly beautiful and, from our experience, it only happens once a year. Don’t miss it! Opening day of the season….

This is the sixth update to this post. I’ll keep updating this post as I learn more.