Eclipse

My tide chart study paid off, because we set our picnic blanket and the waves came close but even the strongest ones stopped about 30 cm away from us.

The spot we picked was next to a construction site, so there weren’t many tall buildings around to block our view, and not many people set up near us so we had a lot of room. Next to us there was a Mexican family playing raashanim or maracas the entire time. We thought it might be to scare the evil spirits. We used towels as pillows to lie down and look at the sky, or read our books.

We saw the eclipse clearly through thin high clouds. It was awesome! Saw bright orange solar prominences that looked like solar flares, but are actually towering arcs of plasma connecting sunspots, amazing to see with the naked human eye from Earth. We noticed the planet Venus nearby the sun and moon. Totality was over four minutes and felt much shorter; I couldn't look away from the black sun.

We remained at the beach another hour until the partial eclipse ended, and went back to our hotel to rest by the pool and shower. In the afternoon we walked around our area of town, to get Poke for lunch. As tables became available we changed tables three times before our food arrived, upgrading from outside to in, then to a booth.

In the supermarket across the street we recharged Leia’s phone with another GB of data for 50 pesos, which was remarkably easy and convenient. Her social media habits were thirsty for data.

On the seaside of that neighborhood we visited “seashell city”, a large seashell souvenir store that had a museum on the upper floor closed for maintenance. We bought a couple of souvenirs, very cheap - only a few dollars. We also browsed a few other souvenir shops and jewelry stores.

At a health-food place called Pura Vida we had a fruit shake called gringolada: strawberry, banana, and orange. I had a few tacos at a random local taqueria. On the way back we stopped into a small distiller to taste many samples of flavored tequila and vodka.

In the evening we met my astronomer acquaintance and his family at their lavish hotel across the street, and had a cocktail with them: Leia had Dirty Monkey which tasted like a dessert, and I had a local Blue Lagoon variant. My coworker, the astronomer’s wife, took their kid to bed and we went with her husband for more tacos, meat skewers, and a beer at the sports bar by our hotel. We chatted about eclipses and travel, and it turned out he had met Xavier Jubier the day before, a celebrity in the eclipse world, who makes all the best eclipse maps and weather charts at http://xjubier.free.fr/en