What Is 'The Best Weather in the World'?

Grecia, Costa Rica. Medellin, Colombia. Cotacachi, Ecuador. Boquete, Panama. Ajijic, Mexico.

What do all these places have in common?

Ask people who have lived in any of them for a while, and sooner or later they'll all tell you... "It has the best weather in the world."

Of course, weather is a subjective thing. For reasons we've never been able to understand, some people actually prefer snow and ice. Others, again for reasons unknown to us, long for the kind of weather you find inside a sauna.

And it goes without saying that all the places mentioned above don't have exactly the same weather, so they all can't have "the best weather in the world," whatever that means.

But people keep saying it... and we've said it ourselves. We've lived in two of these places and spent time in the other three, and we'll say without hesitation that they all have the best weather in the world.

So what exactly do we mean by that?

We're from Nebraska, so when we say "the best weather in the world," we primarily mean... deep down and on a very fundamental level... weather that won't kill you.

If you've ever had your car stall on a country road 40 miles outside town at 10 p.m. on a January night in central Nebraska, you know what we mean. Fourteen degrees below zero is one thing... add a 30-mile-an-hour prairie breeze and you have what Nebraskans call a "chilly evening." The kind of evening that can be tough on exposed flesh.

So for us, weather that doesn't make you lose fingers and toes if you have to walk to the nearest gas station can easily qualify as the best weather in the world.

But you don't have to be caught out in it to know if the weather around you isn't ideal. Sit inside on one of those "chilly evenings" and listen to the furnace running non-stop, gobbling up high-priced energy, and you can almost feel your bank account shrinking.

Likewise, living in a place where you can fry an egg on the sidewalk and only you, mad dogs, and Englishmen go outside after noon can be a challenge. Anyplace where the morning news features a "heat danger index" and a fund drive for fans for the elderly is -- for us -- a place that does not have the best weather in the world... especially if you have to listen to the morning news over the constant, electricity-sucking hum of your air conditioner.

For us, a place has the best weather in the world if we don't need a furnace or air conditioner at all... ever. A place where no one has ever heard of a "snow shovel" because it's never snowed. A place where, on the hottest day of the year, you can take a walk without worrying about staying hydrated and having to take a shower afterward.

It's a place like the place we live now, where your monthly utility bills cost about as much as a dinner and a couple beers at Outback... every month, all year long.

As we said, it's all subjective. Some people want to spend the rest of their lives in Speedos and sandals and don't mind the smell of DEET. Others enjoy paying attention to things like goose-down thermal ratings and wind-chill indexes.

But for us, spending the rest of our lives in jeans and t-shirts feels about right. Most nights where we live in Ecuador are cool enough to take a sweater along for our walks to the town café. Most days are warm enough to leave the sweater in the closet. Those are about the biggest decisions our weather forces us to make.

We'd say the same for all the places we mentioned at the beginning. And there are hundreds more around the world just like them. That's a good thing to keep in mind when you start thinking about your own bad-weather escape.

So how much could you save if you eliminated everything you spend each year on heating and/or air conditioning?

That's about how much we like living in a place with "the best weather in the world."

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