| The Solar Eclipse 2002 |
2-4/12/2003 |
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Following is the abridged account of my trek to see the second solar eclipse in my life, the first being the one in Germany in August 1999.
I set off on Monday morning from Vilankulo in Mocambique and flew via Beira to Johannesburg, where I arrived in the late afternoon. I then waited at the airport for nearly 2 hours until, I and an American couple got picked up by the Ritz Backpackers, which are notoriously slow in getting their guests from the airport.
Once at the hostel, which I had booked some weeks in advance during my last stay there, I went out to the cinema and had a quiet evening as I would be doing lots of driving the following day. I had also arranged with Fern, a friend from Durban to meet up in Johannesburg, as she wanted to come and see the eclipse as well.
Fern arrived the morning of the 3/12/03 by bus from Durban and I had already hired a car, so once she got to the hostel we set off on our trip up north towards Messina, a small town close to the Zimbabwean border far up north. The town did not only lie in the line of totality, but also had a small regional airport at which some skydivers were trying to jump during the eclipse.
I had spent lots of time and money in the run up to this eclipse trying to persuade the South African Parachutist Association to let me also skydive during the eclipse, as I had done during the eclipse in Germany some years earlier, but in the end Jerry the S&T Officer would not have it mainly on procedural/legal grounds. The final decision was only taken on this Tuesday 4/12/02.
Fern and I drove North for about 8 hours but only in the beginning and in the end encountering heavier than usual traffic. We stopped for the night some 120km short of Messina. There we camped for the night and headed off very early the next morning, at the crack of dawn so to speak towards our destination.
The eclipse was to take place at about 9:15 local time, so even with more than 3 hours to spare for the remaining 120kms it almost turned out to be a close call, as traffic had picked up significantly in the morning. Unfortunately not only the traffic but also the clouds had completely covered the sky at the Campground I was dreading the thought that we may not get to see anything after having come all this way. However Messina was still some kilometers away and first of all we needed to get there in time, which in the end we managed, arriving at the airfield (8km East of Messina), with about half an hour to spare.
At this point we were all getting quite excited, not only had the cloud cover gotten much lighter with large breaks, but also the moon had almost reached a point where only a small sickle of the sun was left and the event was getting imminent.
I wandered to the group of skydivers and had a short talk with them, trying to give what good advice I could, but in retrospect it turned out to be quite futile as the eclipse would be quite different from the one I had experienced in Germany.
The time of the eclipse was approaching quickly and the light around us grew dimmer with the same eerie colour I remembered from '99. The totality came very quickly and shut out the light around us but despite being in the line of totality the darkness was not nearly as complete as in the previous eclipse. I tried to take some photographs with my normal camera which unfortunately do not do the real experience a lot of justice.
With the same speed at which the darkness had approached it also departed after about a minute and we were left in awe together with a great number of other onlookers at the airfield. It turned out that we had been very fortunate as only a small hole in the cloud allowed us to see the full eclipse with the clouds covering the sun almost immediately after the event had passed.
Still slightly startled but very happy we made our way back to the car and got going on our long return trip to Johannesburg. The drive was slightly shorter and faster than on the way there as we elected to drive on the toll road rather than using the very good secondary alternatives, arriving in Jo'burg at around 5pm. Just in time to drop Fern off at the central Bus station from where she would take the bus back to Durban. I quickly said my goodbyes and headed out to the airport as quickly as possible to drop off the rental car and catch my flight to Capetown.
After some troubles finding the filling station at Jo'burg airport I finally succeeded, dropped off the car and quickly made my way to the SAA check in. There I managed to get onto an earlier flight leaving only some 15 minutes later and arriving into Cape Town at around 8pm. At the airport I was greeted by my sister with whom I would be travelling around South Africa for almost the whole month of December - an account of which can be found here.
What a long yet amazing and incredible day!
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