The average temperature in the Amazon rainforest generally ranges between 20°C (68°F) and 35°C (95°F) year-round, but apart from the dry and rainy season, this depends on lowland or highland Amazon, and forested and deforested areas (like cities and villages).
eBook | Click for details
Sometimes, specifically with heavy rains coming in that are accompanied by a cold front, temperatures can suddenly drop significantly (sometimes even to lows between 10°C to 17°C), but it’s relatively rare that this happens.
I can remember this one time that the rains came in, and within fifteen minutes the temperature dropped from around 30°C to 18°C. That gives quite a chill and you quickly pull on a sweater, having the feeling you are suddenly plunged in a European autumn, or something.
But, overall, you can just safely say that the Amazon is a hot environment. Now, it’s not only hot, but also very humid, often between 80% and 100% humidity level, which makes the air feel consistently warm, heavy, and stuffy.
Even in the dry season, humidity levels wouldn’t go lower than 65%. So, although it doesn’t rain during the “dry period” — sometimes for months — the dense forest still keeps its humidity levels quite high.
The high humidity makes that you need to deal with very specific conditions. It means that — when not exposed to the sun — everything stays sort of wet and damp, such as your clothes, bedding, towels, wooden surfaces, books, and paper(s). That’s very, very uncomfortable, and impractical.
It doesn’t only speed up the “molding” process and decay of your stuff, sometimes you cannot even sensibly write on a piece of paper or turn the pages in a book because things are too wet and sticky.
Moreover, everything you own that’s electronic or contains metals, such as a machete, screws, nails, tools, laptop, radio, photo camera, or phone will rust and breakdown much sooner than when you would live in the city or in other areas of our planet.
eBook | Click for details
Of course, because we lived off-grid in an open-air hut, we didn’t have any means to protect ourselves against the humidity. But even if we would have been able to close the cabin, it would still be an exceedingly wettish environment.
When you live in the forest of French Guiana, you solve the humidity issue by drying your tools as quickly as possible after use, or by using a so-called touque, which is a waterproof plastic barrel with a screwable lid. You have them in different sizes and they are indispensable to keep your things dry. So, we had lots of those to put our clothes in, bedding, electronics, books, papers, food (which also keeps them safe from animals and insects), and so on.
In addition, you would regularly hang your clothes in the sun to air and dry, or place your mattress, towels, bed sheets, and electronic equipment in direct sunlight to expel the humidity, and so on.
As I already mentioned in my previous post Daily Life in the Amazon Rainforest, living in the jungle makes for tough and continuous work to keep things livable, is sometimes exceedingly tiring, and the so-called “romantic side” is often hard to find.
