2010 Total Solar Eclipse - Easter Island

By Mark Sukhija

Update: Guest posts on this blog are welcome. If you're going to an eclipse and want to write about the experience and / or your travels to the eclipse get in touch. Sadly, the economy prevented me from going on this Journeys Worldwide tour.

For the 2010 Solar Eclipse, we will be, once again, travelling with Journeys Worldwide to Easter Island. We will be arriving from Zurich in Lima for two nights. We will spend one day sightseeing in Lima. We will then head to Cuzco for a four-night stay. From Cuzco we will visit Machu Picchu, the Sacred Valley and the Pisac markets. We will visit Puno and the shores of Lake Titicaca. From Puno we will then travel the Floating Islands and Copacabana, where we will spend one night. In Copacabana we will take a cruise on Lake Titicaca before travelling to La Paz for two nights. We will spend a day sightseeing in La Paz and the Moon Valley. After La Paz, we will head to Santiago and onto Easter Island. We will establish the exact vantage point to view the eclipse on Saturday 10th July. We will see the eclipse on Sunday 11th July. On the 12th we will head back to Santiago.

Our exact itinerary before joining Journeys Worldwide and after returning to Santiago have yet to be determined.

Seeing the eclipse

Given the location of this eclipse, i.e. the Pacific Ocean for the most part, the centre line mainly over islands and atolls. As a result, getting there by air on an international flight almost always involves a change onto a domestic flight for which you will need to leave some time. Similarly, accomodation, already in short supply, is finding itself in unusually high demand over the eclipse period. Reports that some places have sold out accomodation are not wide of the mark - especially as some tour firms started touting their wares during 2007.

Eclipse tour operators

I've received some information from tour operators about their intentions for 2010 - which i've published here.