Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford
I'm pretty sure Santiago is a lot colder than San Jose, CA. There's snow just outside the city, and below-freezing temps aren't uncommon in the winter. Santiago has high elevation.
My wife lived in Santiago during her middle school years, so I'm just going by what she said, but she definitely thinks its a lot colder than Mexico City, and Mexico City isn't exactly warm in the Winter months.
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Santiago is a little colder than San Jose, but I'd say the climates are pretty similar (spent a lot of time in both). There are
mountains with snow right outside the city, but the city itself isn't at that high of an elevation (~2000 ft), receives snow about once a decade, and it never sticks. Freezing temperatures within the city are as rare as they are in SJ. That said, it's not a tropical city by any stretch, and the pollution can be pretty overwhelming during the summer - it makes Salt Lake City look smog-free.
I would agree with others that the Columbian cities are some of your best bets. Cartagena is a great city, but a bit warm/humid for my taste. Bogota has phenomenal weather and is a great city. Both cities, along with others in Colombia, are improving rapidly in just about every way. The only downside is that travel outside the cities in Colombia is still relatively dangerous compared to say, Brazil.
You mentioned northeast Brazil, and while I have a special connection to Fortaleza (traveled there several different times for different reasons, proposed to my wife there, etc), I can't recommend it based on your view that wealth disparity is alarming in Rio/SP. As someone else mentioned, northeast Brazil takes wealth disparity to another level compared to those two cities. Natal and Fortaleza aren't too bad (probably somewhat similar to SP, maybe a little worse), but Salvador and Recife are orders of magnitude worse than Rio or SP. Each one is basically a nice (ish) colonial center surrounded by some gated highrise complexes surrounded by miles and miles of favelas. If you're looking for a place in Brazil without huge wealth disparity, look to cities in the three southern states. Not really tropical I guess, but still plenty warm. Portuguese is probably a bit harder to learn than Spanish, but not overwhelmingly so. Understanding/speaking Spanish in most of the South American countries (especially Venezuela/Colombia, IMO) is going to be a pretty major adjustment from San Diego Spanish anyway, so I wouldn't worry about it.
Also, if you're tempted to look at southern Brazil, definitely consider Buenos Aires. I lived there for a little over seven months for my first job out of grad school and loved every minute of it.