November is the low point of the Chocó year. The southern swell has gone, the whales have gone, the wind has not yet settled into the pattern that gives the reef its March, and the rain is at its heaviest.
What that leaves is a reef that breaks nearly every day and a sky that ruins most of them, and a river point that will not see a rideable swell for five months. It is the one stretch of the year where the honest advice is that there is somewhere better to go.
The rivers behind the beach are worth knowing about in this month for a different reason. They run high, the boat transfers along the coast get slower, and the connection between a flight into the jungle strip and a bed is the part of the trip most likely to move.
