Mexico Travel Blog, Part 3
Monday April 8—Eclipse Day
A few days in advance, the weather forecasts were mixed: some predicted clouds, others mainly sunshine. Now, at 09.30 hrs—twenty minutes before First Contact—the sky is mostly sunny, with a few scattered clouds. I’m in a park two blocks from the apartment I rented, where there are about ten other eclispe enthusiasts. The rest—most probably hundreds of thousands of them—are probably on the beach, where [name of Mexican bands] are make a heck of a noise. In contract, it’s nice and quiet here, which I prefer. Only some birds cooing and making other assorted bird noises.
After all the stress and food poising, I feel quite well today. reasonably relaxed, as it seems that things will be alright during totality—ninety minutes from now. The prelude to my tenth eclipse—nine total ones, one [circular]—wind from the South, although weather (clouds) are coming in from the West (the ocean). The sky is not completely clear, about 75% or so. So I live in hope.
The eclipse enthusiast in this park all seem to be Americans—no locals so far. The locals may have decided to watch it from their back yards, and rightfully so. In the meantime: 09.51 hrs onwards: First Contact. The first part of the sun nibbed away at 02.30 hrs. It has begun, as always, like clockwork.
Thin clouds in the sky, hope they stay thin until totality. On the other hand, the sky at the 2009 eclipse north of Wuhan, China, was much cloudier, yet the eclispe still burned through it. We’ll see.
Thankfully, totality was visible. Through the thin cloud layer, the corona was visible but the wider halo of the sun was not. A huge protuberance at 4 o’clock, and a smaller one at one o’clock.
When totality ended, there was a rainbow-coloured halo around the sun—most probably the sunlight filtered through the clouds—that my iphone camera didn’t quite capture (even though my video of the start of did) unfortunately. This was the unique thing I saw at this solar eclipse (there’s always something that stands out).
Also, just before totality several streetlights automatically switched on, as nature in the park had become totally quiet (and all could have been totally quiet except for two Mexican local ladies who just arrived before totally, figured they should sit close to me, and kept yabbing throughout totality. The only minor point of the event).
I had trouble keeping my big binoculars upricht as the sun was indeed very high. For one, it was very close to noon and Mazatlan is just within the tropics (just below the tropic of cancer) plus this being ten weeks before solstice meant that the sun stood very high in the sky. Highest I’ve seen it during a totality, so I was happy I bought the tripod, as I’m not sure if I could have held my large and heavy binoculars up for about four minutes. Totally worth it.
And then I get back to my apartment after the eclips to shorten the video I shot of the start of totality in iMovie. The moment I got that done and want to post the result on Twitter, the internet in the apartment fails. Mexico is such a failure, a horrible mess.
I try through my smartphone (which still has signal), but have to airdrop the file because the iMovie I put in iCloud of course hadn’t uploaded. What’s left: use my iPhone as hotspot and use the lower compression file first, and post the high-res one when WiFi resumes in this sorry excuse for a country.
But then iCloud continues to upload stuff in the background, which I can’t stop, so it eats up my remaining MBs. So I need to cut the file from which iCloud is downloading to my desktop, then reconnect to my iPhone, rebook my MBs, and go again. It is horrible beyond imagination.
So I gave up and went out in search for a beer. The beach shack recommended to me was occupied by a private Eclipse Party (not unexpected). I walked around some more and decided to have a late lunch at a restaurant called Pablo’s. That was a lucky hit: great food, ice cold beers and also internet, meaning I could post my eclipse video. That more than made up for the internet trouble I had earlier, and the day ended on a high.
Author’s note: July was absolutely brutal with regards to work load. Things should improve shortly (I can say for sure after August 25). I have a lot to catch up, while the Glasgow WorldCon is approaching (August 8, 2024). For that. I’ve produced a little chapbook containing my hard SF stories, which came out quite well in print. Check it out if you see me in Glasgow, it’ll be for sale. And if I have any left after WorldCon, I’ll make them available here. Many thanks for your support!
