Chasing 72° — a one-year loop around the world
A one-year eastbound loop — Oaxaca, Essaouira, Windhoek, Chiang Mai — that never leaves the 65–80°F band.
Oaxaca → Essaouira → Windhoek → Chiang Mai. Four bases, three months each, eastbound, back where you started in twelve months.
| Average miss from 72°F | ±1.6°F |
| Coldest / warmest month | 69.0° / 75.5° — never outside the 65–80 band |
| Rain, all twelve months | 7.3 inches total |
| Average cost | $1,162/month, about $13,900 for the year before flights |
| Flying | 25,531 miles in four long-haul legs |
How this route was built
Ten years of daily mean temperature and precipitation (2015–2024, ERA5 reanalysis via the Open-Meteo archive) were pulled for 104 candidate cities — 92 established long-stay hubs plus twelve highland and shoulder-season additions — reduced to monthly normals, then searched across every combination of four cities that:
- holds 65–80°F in all twelve months,
- allows at least 90 days on a US passport,
- and forms a genuine eastbound circumnavigation — four hops of 25–165° of longitude summing to exactly 360°.
That left 175,000 feasible loops. Scoring them on temperature deviation alone produces a different winner than scoring them on temperature and rain — which turns out to be the most interesting finding here.
The route
Oaxaca, Mexico · March–May · 69° / 72° / 72°
A 5,100 ft valley in the Sierra Madre. March through May is the tail of the dry season — under an inch of rain a month — and the heat breaks the moment you leave, in June, when rainfall jumps from 2.2 to 6.6 inches.
- Cost $800–1,300/month
- Visa Mexico grants up to 180 days at officer discretion. The only leg with real slack in it.
- Watch for Chronic water scarcity, and periodic teacher-union road blockades.
- On to Essaouira — 5,434 miles.
Essaouira, Morocco · June–August · 69° / 72° / 73°
The single best leg on the route. Atlantic upwelling and the trade winds hold Essaouira near 72°F through a summer that puts Marrakech, three hours inland, over 100°F. Rainfall across the entire three months: two tenths of an inch. Essaouira and the Atlantic coast have long had a reputation as Morocco's mildest corner — the data agrees emphatically.
- Cost $800–1,100/month
- Visa 90 days visa-free, and a calendar quarter is 92. You need the police extension or tighter dates.
- Watch for Constant wind — it's a kitesurfing town for a reason. French, not English, runs daily life.
- On to Windhoek — 4,137 miles.
Windhoek, Namibia · September–November · 69° / 74° / 76°
Southern-hemisphere spring at 5,600 ft, and the leg that makes the whole loop work — it's the only way to get a temperate September through November without going north into an expensive autumn. September to November is the back half of the dry season: 0.7 inches across three months, and the summer heat arrives in December, right as you leave.
- Cost $900–1,300/month (Windhoek averages about $1,040 for a single person)
- Visa Namibia now requires a visa for US citizens — available on arrival at Hosea Kutako, but you must present accommodation confirmation, proof of funds, insurance and an onward itinerary. Advisory is Level 2.
- Watch for The least-established stop of the four: small expat scene, thin infrastructure outside the capital.
- On to Chiang Mai — 6,221 miles.
Chiang Mai, Thailand · December–February · 72° / 71° / 75°
Thailand's cool-dry season, and the reason to be here in exactly these months. You arrive after the monsoon has drained out and leave at the end of February — just as burning season begins.
- Cost $1,100–1,800/month
- Visa The DTV gives 180 days per entry on ฿500,000 of savings. Without it, 60 days visa-exempt plus a 30-day extension is exactly 90, with no margin.
- Watch for Leaving on time is the whole point. Chiang Mai's air in March and April is among the worst on earth.
- On to Oaxaca — 9,739 miles, the Pacific crossing, and the expensive one.
Three things worth knowing before booking anything
1. A calendar quarter is longer than a tourist visa. Three consecutive months runs 91 or 92 days. Morocco, Namibia and visa-exempt Thailand all stop at 90. Every leg except Oaxaca is over the line by one to two days if you move on the first of the month. Shift each stay to about 88 days — or carry the DTV and Morocco's police extension — and it disappears. It is the same failure mode that catches people on Central America's CA-4 zone, where a 1 December to 28 February stay is exactly 90 days against a 90-day allowance.
2. The purist route is warmer on paper and much wetter in practice. Optimizing for temperature alone gives Oaxaca → Essaouira → Bangalore → Da Nang, which sits a remarkable 0.9°F from 72 all year — better than the route above. But it puts you in Bangalore for the northeast monsoon and Da Nang for its wettest three months: roughly 49 inches of rain across the year, against 7 on this one. Identical temperature, completely different year. Da Nang alone averages 13.9 inches in November and 13.3 in December.
3. The exits matter as much as the arrivals. Three of these four bases are timed to leave just before something unpleasant — Oaxaca before the June rains, Windhoek before the December heat, Chiang Mai before burning season. That isn't a coincidence: the 72° window and the good-weather window are the same window, and both close.
Stitching it to a longer trip
The loop opens in Oaxaca on 1 March, which makes it a natural continuation of a winter spent in Central America — a Guatemala–El Salvador dry-season leg ending on 28 February is a short hop south of Oaxaca. Run the two back to back and you get fifteen continuous months, December 2026 through February 2028, never outside a comfortable band and never above about $1,200 a month.
The catch is the flying. Four long-hauls a year is the structural cost of the concept, and the Chiang Mai–Oaxaca leg alone is 9,739 miles. Open-jaw ticketing helps; nothing makes it cheap. If the flights are the binding constraint, the honest answer is to give up circumnavigation and hold a two-base seasonal swing instead — the isotherm doesn't require you to go all the way around, it just makes a nicer story if you do. For reference on the transpacific pricing, a Chiang Mai–Oaxaca routing via a Midwest hub such as Chicago is the most commonly quoted version of that leg.
Temperatures and rainfall are ten-year means (2015–2024) from ERA5 reanalysis via the Open-Meteo archive, computed per calendar month at each city's coordinates. Reanalysis smooths terrain, so mountain and coastal microclimates can run a degree or two off a local station. Costs are for one person, lean but comfortable, drawn from long-stay cost-of-living surveys for each city. Namibia entry requirements and advisory level from the US State Department country page (advisory issued 15 May 2026).