Day 8 - Hami to Eclipse and Yiwu

I got up early and walked over to the hotel's business center at 6:15 and found it was not open. The young Chinese girl I woke was not to happy with me. We mailed postcards home from here. We had breakfast with an Australian couple from Sydney. We left the hotel at 8:20AM. When we stopped for some water Jim Huddle would try to explain about the eclipse to the locals and give them eclipse glasses. While holding my solar shield David filmed and interviewed me. Sorry I won't make the video...stage fright. We encountered our first checkpoint just at the edge of town. We were told to expect 6 or 7 checkpoints. All of the bridges, large or small, had guards posted at or in sight of them. As we climbed through the mountains we drove over the pass and were confronted with a beautifully flat and green high planes, "The Steppe". We saw mustard plant fields for the bee keepers bees, big and small herds of goats with their shepherds. I saw a horse wearing "horse cuffs". It's right fore and rear legs were bound together with a four foot long rope. The left legs were bound similarly. Security stopped us again outside a small village. This time it took about 30 minutes and a smart dapper looking solder entered the bus to compare our passports with our faces. It turns out the delay was because mine and Cyd's passport numbers did not match the numbers in their book. When we continued Joseph Huberman created an artificial eclipse by squeezing an oreo so hard the white oozed out like the corona from the sun. It was a scream. Scott and Michelle shared a bottle of wine they purchase back in Turpan as a pre-celebration. We were scheduled to have lunch along the way, but the learned eclipse chasers said no way, let's get there as soon as we can so we can get setup. So we arrived 6 hours early!! The guides set up 3 large "soccer" tents. These would have to do for up to 250 people. The porta pottys cost $0.50 to use. The temperature held in the high 90's all day. You could have cooked eggs on the rocks. Tahleen brought some Eclipse Gum. This day was Dave and Anne Canright's 27th wedding anniversary. David Makepeace set up his equipment near his Canadian friends, but they abandoned him when the sky began to cloud up. They drove north looking for clearer skies. A Dutch group was here that had driven 5 weeks from Holland. Tony Crocker set up his ipod to play music during the eclipse. Each song had the moon or sun in it's lyrics. A small cloud obscured the sun and moon until about 3 minutes from totality. Some of our group ran across the desert in hopes of a clear view. We stayed put and we all were relieved when the clouds parted. The eclipse was just the greatest natural phenomenon I have ever seen. Nothing can explain the affect it has. As the surroundings darken the temperature drops noticeably. I counted over 50 buses in our area. My estimate is in access of 2500 people. That may be low. I was told that trying to photograph the eclipse while hand holding a camera with a 300mm lens would be hopeless. Never the less, I consulted my eclipse book and my cameras manual during the bus ride. I guessed at the settings and took a few quick photos during totality. Low and behold when I checked my camera later I had some fantastic photos. We drove back and spent the night in Yiuw at the Government Villa.