Eclipse day. T -0. Game time. 🌕🌔🌓🌒🌑🌘🌗🌖 Still in the throes of the final effects of last nights sleeping pill, I heard bambam repetitively pushing the button of the space gas heater. Viewing eclipses being his big passion, I was not surprised that he was uncharacteristically up before me. Last night we opted to stay in, eating fruit and cheese instead of having a second meal in town which would have pushed us into the late night. Settling into a pattern of a mid to late afternoon lunch, we had sat down to eat at a restaurant in Pucon at 3 PM. This was the fastest service we have seen while in Chile but still, we did not finish until 415 pm. We had enjoyed a full day outside and I was pleasantly tired. Walking in to the living room this morning, I was greeted with a high voltage, “ Hi Honey! I think we should be on the road in half an hour!” Not answering, I walked past Mr. Sunshine, flipped on the electric hot water heater, heaped a liberal spoonful of instant Nescafé crystals into my mug and squirted some milk out of the straw hole from the individual serving box. Settling into the La-Z-Boy and extending the leg support a little bit, I started to focus. Bambam had been hard at work doing calculations. At some point I couldn’t resist and I got up and looked at his notebook. Four columns of neat percentages of sun and rain organized by time and city, in an Architect's neat block hand writing. He had figured that we should drive a few hours west to the southern west corner of the path of totality for the optimal chance of seeing any portion of the eclipse. As the caffeine started to prop my eyes open, I got some food ready. An avocado. A tomato. Salt. A few rice cakes. After we ate, I asked if we had enough time to jump in the shower. He said with a big smile, “Sure Honey! Was the extra 30 minutes my fault? Once I got out of the shower, he was still waving his phone around trying to get enough signal to share his latest mathematical calculations with the filmmakers and the Hanu Tribe. Dressed, bags packed with cameras, rain gear, paddles & swim gear (in case it actually WAS clear on the coast), a packaged salad from a few days ago, couple of apples, bag of nuts, a 6 pack and some water. Or was it his fault? A few more calculations, a lot more waving around, some final arranging of the feathers in the hat… Clucking to get the blind dog out of the way, balancing the umbrella while pushing the metal gate open so he could he back the car out, closing & locking the gate with a clang, We were on the road when we were on the road. Just a few minutes into our trip we encountered our first roadblock. It appeared that we were the first car to be turned away just after the local garbage truck. We didn’t have much luck convincing the border guard. He spoke rapid Spanish while we flipped through our folder of papers, copies of our passports, PCR test, coronavirus affidavits… He just looked at us, repeated himself, and said No. We had no choice but to turn around. In this day and age of cellular technology, we were able to immediately fire up Waze and Google maps for Plan B. We took a detour that let us through a maze of washboard dirt roads twisting and turning through beautiful farming country. Just shy of an hour later, we emerged on the other side of the roadblock Less than a kilometer from where we were originally stopped.. Thankfully we left SOME extra time! That was not the last roadblock. We took a combination of backroads to avoid roadblocks, a couple wrong turns, were stopped only one time for a temperature check, and finally found our destination. Along the way, we were texting with the film makers who had a good hour and a half start on us and Facebook messaging with the Hannu tribe who were just enough ahead of us that they didn’t get stopped by the initial roadblock. Initial viewing point: Quelhue Final viewing point: Toltén A small fishing village with single story houses with corrugated tin slanted shed roofs. Maybe 35 people in total spread into little clumps m looking through eclipse classes. We were clearly the only Americans, although some viewers might not have been local. A gang of chickens and one rooster walked right down the middle of the muddy dirt road; a variety of different dogs cane up, hopeful for a snuggle, one little champagne color dog flipping on her back for a belly rub. And clouds. Lots of clouds. We saw some of the total solar eclipse. One bonus of cloud cover is we got to see a crescent sliver with our naked eyes and at one point were able to see more detail through the eclipse classes. A hush fell as the shadow came and day turned to night and back again. We strolled, seeking to connect with others to share the experience. We found another group, and bambam gifted our stickers in the drizzle. We were satisfied with some halting sentences as we half pantomimed, half spoke with simplistic English flavored with the occasional Spanish word. The clouds started to clear 10 minutes after leaving Toltén and we pulled over to view the progress, this time needing our glasses. I can see why ancient peoples thought the world was ending as the rules of nature we use to create our days and night are suspended for a few minutes of magic and reverence. |
Travel is our passion. That, and dancing. Eclipses are pretty cool too.
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