The summation of the day is it went dark, then light again!
So today was the day of the eclipse. Many people will think we are crazy planning a holiday around something so tempermental to view, but it really was something that started as a random comment, turned into a whim and then ended up with us here.
Three to four years ago Forrest came home from school having been learning about eclipses. He wanted to learn more including when the next eclipses were happening. On seeing there was one happening in Europe in the next couple of years he asked if we could go and see it. With it being during the summer holidays I said I didn't see why not and the rest is history.
We are more explorers than sun chasers so a holiday in this heat would not be our usual choice but we thought why not give something different a try.
Back to today and we had planned a lazy morning with a larger lunchtime meal out in Fornalutx. We tried a range of Mallorcan tapas dishes shared between us. Some successful and some less so but it was all part of getting the kids to try something new.
Then it was back to the holiday cottage to prep for our trek to the view point. We had one bag of snacks, one bag of entertainment and general essentials and one bag with around 5 litres of water.
As detailed earlier in the week we had scouted out a good viewpoint but hadn't explored the walk from where we were staying to the Ma-10 road. From the maps it was a straight line up a hill for most of the way with a distance of 700m but a rise of 200m so we were expecting some kind of steps and that's exactly what we got. A LOT of steps!!
We took it steady with many breaks and helped to lighten Matt's load by drinking copious amounts of water which it felt like we were sweating out as fast as it went in. We eventually made it to the road where we worked out we only had the distance and height gain of our house to the grammar school (for those that know where we live) left to walk which made it feel managable.
To our surprise (and a little concern) we were the only people at the viewpoint. We checked the website we were using to locate the position of the sun at a given time (with thanks to Matt's Spanish friend David for this) and reassured ourselves that we were good, but we were happy when another family eventually turned up.
To kill the time before the main event we ate a few snacks, drank some more water and played some Uno. Then with 10 minutes to go relocated ourselves out of the shade and on to the rocky outcrop.
All that was left was the walk back down, retracing our steps, but this time in darkness with the help of our head torches. We estimate that it took about a third of the time it took heading up, but it was still hard work! We were also joined for most of the downward walk once across the road by our black feline friend. She had walked with us some of the way earlier in the day, but hope it was just a coincidence and she hadn't been waiting for us for over 4 hours!
Once back the excitement for the day wasn't over and after finishing off the cheesecake from earlier in the week, we rearranged the sun loungers to be star loungers and managed to see some very impressive perseid meteors.
Blogged by Amber and Matt
