Total eclipse of Saluum

Yes, yes, the title does sound a little bit too much like Bonnie Tyler's old hit "Total Eclipse of the Heart", but hey, it was actually almost that cool (or whatever her song was). As it turned out I happened to be in Egypt right when this total solar eclipse took place in Saluum, a tiny place close to the Libyan border on the Mediterranean coast. I of course had no idea of this, but Lotta had it all figured out as usual so I just tagged along on the trip she had already arranged for herself and some friends of hers. We stayed away for three nights and four days, most of the time spent either in a minivan, in some Egyptian trucker restaurant along the way or in a coffee shop. Only about 4 short minutes were spent under the "totality", but it was sooo worth it.


Day 1
The first day we packed our stuff together and left early in the morning for Marsa Matruh, where we were going to spend the first night. My alarm didn't work, needless to say (or I turned it off without remembering it) so Lotta knocked on my door five minutes befores departure and told me I had just those five minutes to pack and get dressed. It was hell. But after some tameyya breakfast I was in good shape again. Not so much happened on the way, but when we got close to Marsa Matruh we stopped at an amazing beach called Agiba, which means something like "miracle", which was hidden away down in a small bay and where the water had more shades of blue than I have ever seen before. At the end of the day we had seafood in a local restuarant, very yummy.


The Agiba beach outside of Marsa Matruh. Note the cool guy relaxing with a sheesha down there. No bad way to live your life, not bad indeed... :-)


Incredible colors...


Harr harr, ya' old globestrutter just looking finer for each day... :-P


They even had their own "lille havefru", just like in Copenhagen. ;-)

Day 2
This day we mostly spent getting to Saluum and to our camp, there were so many crazy people here, like nerd heaven I guess. Apparently some 20,000 people had come to see the eclipse and they kept pouring in from when we got there all the time until right before the totality. Seemed like all of them had brought state-of-the-art camera and video equipment too, I kind of felt ashamed of my green Brica... :-(


Our tent camp up in the military base in Saluum.


All the other nerds were very busy preparing for the eclipse.

Day 3
Finally the day was here. It was time. Eager expectation and confusion among the amateurs, what time was it really that "first contact" would happen? Was it Egyptian or Greenwich time? Of course the pros just laughed at us when they heard these silly concerns and laughed even more when we looked at the sun through our free but crappy Egyptian Tourist Administration solar eclipse sunglasses. Anyway, here is a free total eclipse vocab for those of you who haven't been to 20 like some of those guys had.

* First contact = The first cut of the moon into the field of view of the sun.
* Totality = The few minutes when the sun is completely covered by the moon.
* Flying shadows = An effect caused by the atmosphere's irregularity which appears as moving bands of shadows on bright surfaces close to the eclipse.
* Crescents = When the sun takes the form of a crescent small holes, as e.g. those in the shadows of leaves on trees, will appear as lots of tiny crescents as well.
* The diamond = The first ray of sunlight from the reappearing sun will look as a diamond shining from one corner of the black moon.

"Maybe just a little bit more to the left to catch the diamond..."


Before...


...and during...


My one terrible shot of the totality.


The eclipse was something really astounding I have to say. You can not really see it coming until just a minute before it gets dark but you can feel the air getting colder and colder and a light breeze that sweeps in due to the cooling air. The dogs start barking and all of a sudden you can see how a big shadow sweeps in and you are surrounded by a 360 degree sunset. It is not dark like in the night, but a different kind of dark bluish color and you can see our closest planets on the sky. And above all the hovering corona of the ecclipse, until it goes away again soon thereafter, as suddenly as it came. Truly impressive.

Immediately after the totality was over everyone wanted to leave right away and it got very crowded. But Mubarak and the visiting Prince Charles blocked everyone until they could leave with their nice helicopters so it took us a little while before we made it back to Marsa Matruh again, where we had dinner and watched some local bedouin singers before going to sleep.


Downtown Marsa Matruh, right outside of our hotel.


Feminine dancing in Arab land. It's very amusing to see how these otherwise so macho guys can completely unembarassed jump onto the stage and wiggle their buttocks in a way that would make even the most rugged globestrutter blush.


Our tour guide Taha looking tired.

Day 3
The last day we headed out to the beach across the street for a few hours and then back home. The end of a long adventure.


Breakfast the last morning...


Lotta relaxing on the beach...