Tue, Jul 2 - Eclipse Day

After our French breakfast, Karen, Hilary and I set off to buy some provisions for our afternoon of eclipse watching.

We got to the large supermarket of Santa Isabel, and bought sandwich makings, cookies and chips.  They suggested La Recova Market for the salsa that we are looking for for our friend, Robert, who used to buy it when he worked at Las Campanas Observatory many years ago.  We walked over to the market which consists of many small booths selling quite nice crafts and local foods, such as the salsa we were looking for.  We found similar sauce and maybe that will do.

At noon we all set off from our hotel  in two cars, heading north about 45 minutes to the spot on a hillside over looking the coast that we had picked out Saturday when we first drove into La Serena.

There were quite a few cars driving in and we saw people camping out and settling in to wait for the eclipse. We parked, walked around some ruins, and checked out some nightshade plants that were blooming. 

There was quite a bit of haze over the ocean which was developing into a fog bank.  We discussed that for a while and finally decided to head inland to higher ground and clearer sky.

We returned to the Panamerican Highway and continued north, seeing people parking all along the highway and even in the median strip.  We knew that several tour groups, including Leila’s & Brian’s, were heading to La Higuera, a small town right on the center line of the eclipse path, but when we approached the turnoff, it was jammed and blocked off to more traffic.  Hilary pulled off the highway onto some dirt and we considered staying there, but being right on the highway with all the noise and cars racing by was too unpleasant.  We noticed cars pulling off the highway ahead and driving into the desert, so we decided to try that.  We approached a wooden gate which some kids were holding open, drove through and up hill about a quarter mile and parked near some family groups who were setting up tables and picnics.

We settled in among the thousands of others scattered across the rocky cactus-filled ranch land,

Lunch!

ate sandwiches and beer and waited until around 3:23 when we could see First Contact - when the moon first takes a bite out of the sun!!

Karen, Hilary, Cait, & I

We could see the fog bank creeping up over the coastal hills and worried that it might block the sun at the critical time. 

After seeing thousands of these tiny cacti, finally one in bloom!

Using Bob’s filters, we watched the sun slowly disappearing.

The air temperature cooled, our shadows became crisper, the sky darkened and suddenly at 4:38 PM, the diamond ring, the last speck of sunlight, appeared and the sun became a black disk and we could observe it with our binoculars and no filters.  It was magnificent, as usual!

And then just as suddenly, the diamond ring re-appeared and the sun’s powerful light took over and the eclipse was finished!  We timed the length of totality as 2 minutes 34 seconds.

We all cheered, packed up and started back. The highway was jammed, of course.  We had to turn around as we were headed north.  The highways in Chile have “returnos” which allow one to turn around on a freeway by entering an exit lane on the left and cutting across the median.  We drove past the completely frozen first one and easily made the turn on the second one we encountered.  The Chilean traffic police were helping control things as best as they could and we were making pretty good progress, considering. 

But it still took us 2.5 hours got get back to La Serena, mainly due to a construction project that reduced two lanes to one just outside the city, which  backed up traffic for many miles.

We got home at 7:30 and immediately set off on foot for Donde el Guatón, the restaurant we went to our first night here.   After Pisco Sours, I had a bowl of Congrio, eel soup, Bob and Cait had steaks a la brasa on the restaurant’s large grill and Hilary had fish of the day. 

Karen and Bill arrived a little later and had crab casserole with corn pudding topping. 

A great day.