Or maybe we should call it the souvenir strip or the tchotchke channel. At the Mexico City airport, vendors are prepared to satisfy everyone’s official plastic-tumbler and gimme-cap needs. Do 10 different eclipse T shirts sound excessive? In Hawaii, some 60 styles are selling briskly, along with “official” eclipse coconuts, wine, ashtrays, pins, tote bags, posters, beach towels and videos. At the Unistyle salon on the Big Island (which will be in heavy moonshadow for an impressive four minutes and 13 seconds), hairdresser Manny Martinez suggests a two-tone eclipse cut: a dyed black flattop surrounded by a corona of orangy, moussed-up spikes ($50, but Manny throws in an observation logbook and two sun filters). The official Eclipse Day breakfast? No, not a simple bowl of Total; the Mauna Lani Bay Hotel offers the Eggclipse: a black-bean-and-salsa “moon” served over a scrambled-egg-and-salmon “sun” ($7.50). Coffee with that? Doris’ Island Delights, in Hilo, sells a “thermal chromatic” mug that says “The Great Hawaiian Eclipse” when filled with hot liquids.
A lot of travel agents also speak as if they’ve been filled with hot liquids, but then they’ve just discovered people like Herman Shilts of Eau Claire, Wis., who is willing to spend about $1,200 for just a few hours of prime eclipse time in Baja California. “Any expense is worth it,” says Shilts, who witnessed the 1979 eclipse in Canada. About 100,000 tourists are expected in Mexico (“The Land of the Sun Celebrates the Eclipse of the Century,” the travel posters say) where some hotels, built in expectation of this event, were sold out three years ago, before construction began. Travelers in Baja without a confirmed room or campsite, says one tourist official, “will have to sleep in their cars.” Hawaii, which expects 60,000 extra visitors, is also booked solid. The best viewing spot, between the peaks of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, will be “an absolute madhouse,” says Tim Thompson, president of the Los Angeles Astronomical Society.
One way to avoid the crowds is to watch from an airplane. Be advised, though, that nine-time eclipse viewer Alex York, 36, a San Diego attorney, says, “You just don’t get the same effect up in the air, where you’re cut off from the environment.” Cruises are another option. The Royal Caribbean Line has a sold-out “Science at Sea” junket ($1,500) that includes lectures by prominent astronomers. Dr. Edwin C. Krupp, director of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles and a speaker on the cruise, sees nothing wrong with scientists or anyone else making a buck off the extravaganza. “The commercialization is near and dear to my heart,” he says. “It’s a wonderful example of human resourcefulness and adaptivity.” New Age events are among the most expensive. Astrologer Daniel Giamario is charging 60 stargazers about $2,000 for a Hawaii retreat with Native American sweat lodges and the chance to unleash their “creative energy.”
New Agers are a big part of the scene, but eclipse watching wouldn’t be such a big business if it didn’t appeal to a broad range of consumers: everyone from an 80-year-old woman traveling to La Paz from her trailer-park home in Rosemead, Calif., to a 4-yearold Dallas boy who will be taking “children’s eclipse classes” while on a Pacific cruise with his parents. “A total solar eclipse has to be the most dramatic event in nature that anyone can witness,” says Joel Harris, a tour director who used to be a NASA public-information officer. “It’s a very primal experience; I’ve s en scientists become extremely agitated and start to cry.” The growing number of eclipse buffs-people who “collect” trips into the path of totality the power of the experience. “It’s like an earthquake without the terror,” says the Rev. Ronald Royer, a Roman Catholic priest from Lakewood, Calif., who has witnessed six eclipses. The title of ultimate eclipse watcher, however, probably belongs to the mysterious “Fred,” who is said to have seen 16. Fred declined to be interviewed for this article, but his interest in sky watching does not seem strictly spiritual. He has a complete line of eclipse greeting cards, badges and decals, all ready to go for July 11.
