January sits in the stretch from December to March when the Chocó gets marginally less rain than usual. Usual is more than ten metres a year, among the highest anywhere people live, so the difference is one a local notices and a visitor mostly does not.
For the surf that stretch matters in one direction only. Pico de Loro, the reef twenty minutes down the coast, breaks on almost anything and loses its days to wind rather than to swell, so a period of steadier weather is exactly what it wants. Nuquí itself, the left point at the river mouth, needs a real southern swell to stand up at all, and January is not the month that brings one.
The water is at 27°C and will be at 28° in May and back at 27° in December. Across the whole year it moves barely a degree, which makes it the one thing here that never enters a decision.
