Under a big black sun

Fwd: this is what I saw this afternoon,
originally uploaded by utt944.

The english couple I met were on their way to Saluum as I was. The husband is has been interested in Eclipses since he was a kid. Both of them were in England when there was a total eclipse but cloud cover made the viewing poor. I really wouldn't know the difference since this was my first.

I have to say every decision we made went perfectly. The hotel was was reasonably comfortable (except for the stunning amount of street noise into the night). Our hotel mother hooked us up with a terrific taxi driver that we hired for the day. Got us to Saluum and to Alexandria in record time and was genuinely a nice person.

Anyway, We paid for tickets to get to a viewing area set up by the goverment. We were told to get to Saluum by 7am because the city would be closed. The president was flying in and for security....blah blah blah.

We got there at about 5:30 AM. We went to the viewing site which might have been good, top of a hill, view of the sea....but dozens of tour buses, crowds of people and the music. Terrible local dance, hip hop and rap music inside, and local bedouin bands outside. The bedouins were ok but the rest had to go.
We made our way down the hill to the town of Saluum. Camped out on the beach and waited....and waited....and waited.
Local kids and townspeople came up to us and welcomed us to the town. Saluum is basically no where. My guidebook says as much. It's your last stop in Egypt before you get to Libya and the people were happy to have some tourists around.

So we wait and wait and wait. Richard, The husband, knew what was going on and tipped me on what to look for. Now to be honest this whole affair is tedious, boring and completely ordinary....until about 45 seconds before totality.
When it started I made observed the surroundings, made notes and basically nothing worth noting was happening.
We all kind of looked at ourselves and said "is this it?"
but about 45 seconds to go, the sunlight started to turn a bit yellow. Richard said to look at the ground and what looked like heat waves were rippling across the sand. I looked through the glasses and there was just a sliver of sun left uncovered, too much to look at with the naked eye. Then BOOM, TOTALITY!
Where I was a kid, and I'm sure every kid is told, "Never look directly at the sun, you'll go blind!" But at this moment, the sun was a deep black circle. I looked at it directly, I couldn't look at anything else. Every logical system in my brain colapsed. THIS WAS UNREAL. The corona was bluish white and streamed around the black sun. It was completely animated which made it more surreal. The sun is supposed to be static, unmovable, like an elephant slowly trodding across the sky but this thing moved, danced almost.
The sky around it was midnight blue, until the horizon. We were on the beach so we could see down the the horizon and the sky was purple and orange, like sunset. but we were in night time.
I can't explain or will try to what it felt like.
Dogs barked, horses bayed. Birds flew then landed and slept. street lights came on....
It went on for 4 minutes. It seemed short or long...I'm not really sure which. The physical rules and measures I know seemed not to apply.
"here comes the diamond ring..." Richard said and about 4 o'clock on the sun the intense light of the sun broke, and it looked like a white diamond ring...and it was over.
The sun started its way back and the birds picked up...for the most part.
And we headed back to Alexandria.
It was one of the most spectacular events I have ever witnessed in my life.
I have to do it again.
I'm back in Cairo. Fly home in two days.
The big stuff on this trip is done.
One more Hard Rock on the way home...then...back to pulling weeds in my yard.