Perfect Cloudless Day For An Eclipse, But It’s Tomorrow

The family arrived here late tonight [one of the grandkids helped me get the keyboard connected to the iPad just now] and slept in late.  I looked at birds in the morning.  Flocks of parrots, pigeons, and various other smaller birds I haven’t identified yet.  I downloaded Aves Argentina on my phone - it’s a free app that is fantastic and you don’t have to be connected to the internet to use it.  I realize most people reading this probably aren’t in Argentina, but I’m sure there are other such apps for other places - after the guide at Iguazú was using it.

   

 

 

Parrots in the first three pictures above, and this is the Great Kiskadee that we saw in Buenos Aires and again at Iguazú.  I’m not sure what this is.  If I find it in Aves Argentina I’ll add it later.

Then we all went to lunch again at the restaurant we ate at yesterday.  Everyone loved what they had. Then we walked around and found out part of why it was so good.  They have an organic garden and a farm.  So we walked around.

 

Yesterday I was marveling at how fresh the various kinds of lettuce in the salad was.  Here’s why.  They pick it just before they serve it.

 Carrots.

 

We met a couple from North Carolina who saw the eclipse in Nebraska a few years back.  And there are three Belgians where we’re staying who are also here for the eclipse.  People are looking at maps of where the total eclipse will be the longest.  From here it should be a little over a minute but there planning to go where it’s 2 minutes long.

We chatted with the owner of this place and we’re having a BBQ here and then we think we’re all going to see the eclipse where it’s two minutes.  But we’ll know tomorrow.  There are questions about how clogged the roads will be at the longest spots.  Some are arguing that there aren’t that many people and cars in the are and plenty of desert where you could pull over and watch.  We’ll find out tomorrow.  Just hoping the sky stays cloudless.  Totality is at 5:39 pm to 5:40pm  (that’s 1:40pm Pacific DLS Time, and 12;40pm in Alaska) or a little longer depending where you are.  The sun goes down around 6:20pm. But I have my granddaughter here for a few days so the eclipse is just frosting.

And let me add - everyone is so nice and helpful and friendly.  The owner really has mastered his smart phone and he’s talking into the phone and letting it speak back to us in English and then has us talk.

Eclipse excitement - Finding The Best Spot To View

Carlos, who runs this ‘resort’, has sent me maps of how long the eclipse will be in totality in different locations. Five kilometers from here it will be one minute and 13 seconds. Sixty kilometers it will be over two minutes.  When I said we could walk that he said to take the dry riverbed and it would only be two km.  He also was talking about all the people who are here or coming. But we’re away from the crowds here.  But there are going to be concerts and other events he said.

Here’s Time and Date’s page for the San Juan eclipse.  Lots of cool stuff there.  Including a countdown clock.  Here’s what it said a minute ago.  Sunset will be pretty close to the end of the eclipse.

Countdown until eclipse begins

1day3hrs42mins40secs


You can see the actual count down at the site.

There’s also a video showing how the moon will go before the sun.

My daughter and family just showed up and I got a long tight hug from my granddaughter whom I haven’t seen for several months. That’s why I have the energy to start this post now.

Here’s from the San Juan paper today

Miles de turistas extranjeros arribaron a San Juan para disfrutar el eclipse solar
30 de Junio de 2019 - 17:30 hs  | Por el fenómeno astronómico, la provincia es en protagonista a nivel mundial. Durante este fin de semana, llegaron visitantes de Europa, Estados Unidos, Japón, entre otros países. 

Which google translate renders as

Thousands of foreign tourists arrived in San Juan to enjoy the solar eclipse

June 30, 2019 - 5:30 p.m. | Because of the astronomical phenomenon, the province is the protagonist worldwide. During this weekend, visitors came from Europe, the United States, Japan, among other countries.

It goes on to list different events in different places.

This article talks about taking photos of a solar eclipse. Looks like I’m just going to watch because you need a solar filter and I don’t have one. But my daughter brought a bunch of eclipse glasses,

Nearing The Eclipse

 Today we took the bus to San Juan, a little more than a two hour ride in asupwr comfortable bus with reclining seats and foot rests through what looked like the cowboy movie West.
[i was starting to. Get the hang of blogging on my iPad but my logitech slim combo keyboard stopped working and the on-screen keyboard just can’t cut it. So things are formatted a bit funny. I can’t see much of the screen.  I can’t scroll.]

There were no taxis waiting at the bus stop. Maps.me ( thanks Brock) said it was a 6.2 mile walk. It also said it wasn’t programmed f.or transit here. But then a couple cabs s howed up. Sergio had no idea where it was and called  someone while I showed him my phone map. I might be tempted to say it’s in the middle of nowhere, but having lived in rural Thailand, i know that everywhere is somewhere. And that proved true. Though the cab driver was worried about leaving us there until he was sure someone was there to help us.  Carlos took us in, and in our limited Spanish and English we communicated.

He asked if we wanted to eat - it was about 2pm - and when we said yes he drove us to a charming little place nearby where a couple of three generation families were having dinner.

It felt so cozy and the food was delicious.  And all these people were somebodies living somewhere,




We walked back the long way, well, longer than how we came.



Some pics

Mendoza and San Juan are both on the Eastern edge of The Andes, which tend to block the ocean moisture, hence the desert landscape.   We,ve been watching the clouds every day and they’ve tended to stay above the mountains. But they did wander further east the day we took the tour up to the snow.

This morning it was cloudy in Mendoza, but sort of thinned out as we came north.  Today at prime eclipse time it was in and out of the clouds, mostly out.  Let’s hope that by Tuesday the clouds stay on the Chile side of the Andes.

And the reason we’re out here . .   There are very few times that starting a sentence with “the reason . . .”  So let’s start it over.  We’re way out of town like this because this area is in the path of totality.  It will be longer further north.


[And i forgot mention a 4.2 jolt while i was working on the post. No biggie but we did feel it. ]

Hotel Bohemia, Mendoza, Argentina

The travel agent in Buenos Aires put us into this hotel.  We lucked out.  It’s an old family house in what our driver from the airport called  a good residential neighborhood.  The owner (I’m assuming he’s the owner), Alberto, is the kind of person who seems to make everyone feel like they are his special friend.  That first night he showed us that he was cutting the seeds out of grapes before

making grape jelly.  He was also making orange marmalade for the guests’ breakfast.  He also bakes the breads and croissants.


Here, you can see the grapes, the grapes that have already been pitted, and the pits.  We spread it on our breakfast bread the next morning.

And below is the dining room where each of the ten rooms has a designated table.

I’m putting up this post because it’s relatively short and I need to go to bed.  But also because this is a great little hotel with incredible service for each guest.  But that still leaves the winery tour yesterday (two wineries and an olive oil ‘factory’), the birding in Iguazu, and today’s trip into the Andes where we went back to December in Anchorage (translation:  it snowed.)  

Murals In Iguazù, Hummingbird Tongue, Tres Fronteras, Marta Schwartz

We flew to Mendoza yesterday.  More on this wine country city later.  Here are some more shots from  Iguazú.


The first is at a hummingbird ‘park’.  It’s really the backyard of an Iguazú family and has been operating for 40 years.  There are lots of feeders and birds besides hummingbirds show up.  We went there at the end of our birdwatching Tuesday morning.  More on this later, but I wanted to share this  picture that has the hummingbird’s tongue.

  

At first.I thought it was the sugar water coming out, but Fernando said it was the tong ue.

 
The local indigenous people are the Guarani.  I can’t find anything in English on Guarani in Iguazú so here is something in Spanish (use Google  Translate if you need to).  I’m not sure how sensitive this account is, so read with cutural alerts turned on.

This says (very loosely)  it’s a community for growing small gardens for women who want to be entrepreneurial.

  

   This sign, I’m told, is an advertising for ca rds and tarot readings and other ‘black magic’ to help find jobs, mates, and anything you need.  

My wife noted that she hadn’t seen any statues of women and then I saw this bust of Dr. Marta Teodora Schwartz, “the angel of the forest.”    Again, it’s in Spanish, but I don’t have time to get a translation for you.  Google translate is very easy to use, just cut and paste, and it’s really pretty good translations.

And here’s a church nearby named after Señora [I’ll add this in when I get more time].

And at this point you can see Brazil across the river to the right, Paraguay across the other river to the left, and a bit of Argentina from where I’m taking the picture - Tres Fronteras. 

  

And one last mural.  I have no idea what it means.  

In Addition To The Water . . .

Showed pictures mostly of water going down hill yesterday and the day before at Iguazú.  So now let’s look at some other distractions.

 Figs.

 

Those critters begging at the table are coatimundi   They’ve become a pest in the park.  My wife saw jump on the table and swipe an ice  cream from a woman eating at a table like this.

 There are lots of signs telling people not to feed the coatis.  Like the one below that warns about both monkeys and coatis.    In the middle of the sign is a picture of puncture holes on someone’s hand.    Yet despite the warning, people crowd around the sign to  get pictures of the capuchin monkeys, sitting on the sign.  And below on the left a woman with kids is feeding the monkeys bread.

 I

 

More later.  [Here are a couple more.]

   

Iguazu From The Other Side - Never Saw So Much Crashing Water

Yesterday’s visit to the Brazilian side of the Iguazu set of waterfalls, left me wondering how the Argentine side could possibly match it.

Well, today I found out.  As our guide yesterday said, both sides are different.  From the Brazil side you have a better overall panorama of the the 2.7-kilometre-long (1.7 mi) long wall of waterfalls and you see them more or less from below.  But the Argentine side has a lot more trail (we walked about 3 kilometers yesterday, and today on the Argentine side, about 9), and you see a lot of the waterfalls close up, from above and below.  Small waterfalls here, would be big attractions all by themselves elsewhere.  Here they are just one more jaw-drop in an incredible day of far off and close up views of water thundering down vertical walls from great heights. 

The spray at points is strong enough to create a booming business in plastic raincoats and cell phone holders.  

Sorting through all the pictures I took and resizing them for posting is proving too time consuming on my iPad than I can manage.  Maybe I’ll put more up later when I’ve got my Macbook.  I’ll just put up a few picture here today.  

But I’ll also point out that the falling water, well crashing water might be more accurate, is just the most obvious and wondrous sight here.  But then there are the animals - mammals, birds, insects - and the flora.  And the people coming to see all this.  Mostly I heard Spanish and Portuguese.  Relatively little English or other languages.  So here are a few attempts to convey this massive water movement.       

I’d also add that both the Brazilians and Argentines have done a  spectacular job of constructing trails that allow visitors to get up really close from different angles.

Above is looking down from the top of Galante de Diablo - the biggest of the falls, and the one you see closest from below on the Brazilian side.  
 


And here I am on top, right in the middle of things.  This is where people (who had them) wore their raincoats.  As you can see, my camera filter was all wet.  The no ise is constant.

And then getting back a bit so you can see how massive this all is.


And below is part of the miles of metal boardwalk that take you so close to the water.  The cloud is just mist rising up from one of the many falls.

I mentioned above how ‘small’ falls here would be a big deal elsewhere.  I got that notion looking at the two falls on the lower left.  They’re actually pretty big.  But next to the massive fall to their right, they’re nothing.  But they are each stunning.

But let’s pull back a little more and put it into perspective.  (The really big one is San Martin Falto - falls)

And you just kept being hit with views like this all day long.  Enough.  We’re going birding tomorrow morning early.