Eclipse
On wednesday the 29th of march there was a solar eclipse for almost four minutes in Saloum, near the Libian border. Two days before, on monday night, I took a bus from Cairo to Saloum. I bought my ticket four days in advance, just to be sure. In Luxor I heard the Egyptian government had created a campsite for 20,000 people. So I expected a lot of people who wanted to go to Saloum. It turned out that there were only five tourists in that bus, me, Alexander from the Ukraine, Sebastien from France and Jim and David from the USA. All the other people in the bus were Egyptians.
It was my second eclipse. I saw the 1999 eclipse in the south-eastern tip of Belgium, unfortunately under cloudy conditions. For Alexander it was his first and for Sebastien his fourth.
I was worried that the sky on wednesday wasn't going to be as blue as I hoped for, because it had rained hard in Cairo that monday. The next morning, tuesday, after a bus ride of ten hours, it was clouded in Saloum. Near the entrance to the village, we foreigners had to leave the bus. After paying 100 Egyptian pounds (about 14 euro) for an entrance ticket for the eclipse, and waiting for passport checks, a lorry brought us to a terribly overpriced hotel.
We didn't want rooms in that hotel, also because it all seemed to be a setup between the police and that particular hotel owner. So we tried to find another hotel. We found a hotel that had two rooms free for about 3 1/2 euro per person per night with friendly staff.
Saloum is near the Libian border. West of Saloum there's a table mountain. The border with Libia is there. The mountain is military area. The campsite was built there and all festivities were organized there.
We first took some time to sleep a little and then explored the city. Saloum is a pleasant city with very nice people, also worth a visit without an eclipse. In the afternoon four of us visited the table mountain. We didn't have to walk all the way up, because an ambulance gave us a lift. We met some people over there, also people from the Netherlands. But we decided that we preferred to view the eclipse either in the streets of Saloum or on the hotel roof.
We met Michael from Australia and Jehanna from Italy who already found a room in 'our' hotel some days before. Later that day we met a Canadian man, Tim. He found a room in this hotel too.
The eclipse
On wednesday morning there was a clear blue sky. It made me very happy. Imams of all mosques were praying a lot. One imam used a car with speakers. It was a long wait until first contact. The others were preparing their camera's on the hotel roof and we witnessed a huge influx of policemen. Local people gathered near the seaside to view the spectacle. The hotel roof became more and more crowded with children and adults from Saloum.
As totality neared, it got darker and there was a cool wind. Just before totality, there was a special light, like light from a tube light or extra strong moonlight. Jim showed me waves of light on the ground. From the roof we could see the shade coming from the mountains. That was really special. As soon as totality started, the people started shouting 'Allah hu akhbar' (Allah is great) and there was a lot of excitement among the local people. The corona was beautiful and I enjoyed the spectacle very much.
I will add a short video later, made with my camera. Furthermore I hope to add sound recordings, made with Jims video camera.
