20240407 Sunday, April 7, 2024- Moving from Park Royal to Royal Villas Resort in the Golden Zone

It was pretty easy getting up earlier with sunrise occurring at 5:50am.  We checked out of the Park Royal and had a cab take us to the Royal Villas Resort.  The bell captain informed us that taxis don't take credit cards so when we told him we only have US currency, he got the taxi driver to accept $10 US for the trip to the Royal Villas, which was just 4 miles but which would have been impossible with suit cases since we had walked about half that route yesterday.  It proved well worth the fare because it seemed like a really long way with some pretty bad traffic.  We were at front desk by 8am, and were expecting to have to wait until 4pm to get into our rooms, but it turned out that they had a vacant room ready to go, and they let us check in early without extra charge, apparently because we were booked to stay 5 nights.  That was a huge relief because we didn't have to worry about where to store our bags and Ben really needed all his eclipse photography gear to rehearse for the eclipse between 10am and 11:30.  

We got a room on the top floor of the hotel (12) on the north west side of the building.  This gave us a nice view to the west and north, but unfortunately, this meant we weren't going to be able to view the eclipse from our balcony.  Ben was worried that because of the height of the hotels, the sun might be obscured when viewed from the beach or west of the buildings, but it turned out that if he set up right at the edge of the patio between the pool and beach, that there was adequate clearance from the tops of the buildings to get a good shot of the eclipse with his 200mm lens.  We will try to stake out this spot tomorrow morning.  Ben was able to practice setting up the camera to record the arc of the sun on a single video frame without moving the camera during the critical interval between 90% through the totality and 10% reveal.  This will capture the corona once the solar filter is removed.  Ben will have to remove the solar filter the moment totality begins and replace it the moment the sun emerges from behind the moon.  Still images will be taken at intervals from the start of the partial to the end of the partial.  

Ben has a Solar Eclipse Timer app to provide audio cues as to eclipse events and ideal photo intervals.  He had resurrected a retired iPhone to dedicate to this task, and tested it at home, but when the phone was powered up, something had corrupted it so the passcode wouldn't unlock it.  Resetting the phone required an 8GB internet download, which was impossible with the hotel's 2MB/sec internet (7 days to complete download- Ha!).  So plan B is to use Ben's primary iPhone for this.  Unfortunately, the timer ap requires the phone to be dedicated to the task and not used for photography.  But between his mirrorless Canon EOS M50 and Go-Pro cameras, he will be plenty busy.  Janet's iPhone will be used to do photos of people and the surroundings during the eclipse.  

After completion of Ben's eclipse rehearsal, we took a walk down to the Malecon, which is a mile to the south.  We stopped and had lunch at a hole in the wall family restaurant filled with locals.  The kitchen was at the front of the restaurant so you walked between the man making tortillas on the right, and the grills and other work stations on the left, to the dining room in the back.  Nothing fancy, but the food was well prepared and decent portions for pretty inexpensive prices, especially for a tourist zone.  We appeared to have been the only tourists brave enough to wander in.  

There are plenty of tourist oriented bars, burgers and grills along the main drive, which is filled with an insane amount of loud and crowded traffic.  People renting huge UTV's and sand rails drove through town blaring music over the roar of their exhaust.  There are also tons of souvenir shops with trinkets spilling out onto the haphazard side walks, which seemed to be designed to be obstacle courses with dips, ridges, sudden drops, unmarked curbs and random slopes to dump you into the traffic roaring by.  It was quite a contrast to the area around the Park Royal which was relatively devoid of the tourist shops and bars.  It was a bit much for us country mice.  

When we did finally reach the Malecon, the first quarter mile was packed with tourists and vendors making it hard to walk, but it thinned out as you got further from town.  The beach below was full of people of all ages playing in the sand.  We noticed a pile of oysters on a rock near the beach entrance where someone was selling them.  Other vendors walked with huge skewers loaded with shrimp with a lime on the end.  It was very much like a circus environment.

We took a different route going back which was off the main road. This was the access for several waterfront hotels.  As we approached one particular condominium, it was surrounded by several paramilitary vehicles with at least a dozen heavily armed and fully armored and masked soldiers on alert. There must be someone very important spending the weekend in that building to see the eclipse.  

We got back to our room just in time to FaceTime with Price at home and Ciara who is en route to Indianapolis to view the eclipse.  John was en route to Upstate New York, which is also in the totality zone.  He flew back from France for a brief "Vacation" back in the states, but couldn't join the conference from the road. 

We had dinner at the Royal VIlla's formal restaurant and were pleasantly surprised that it was a very nice dining experience, complete with cloth napkins and individual coat and hat mini trees for each table as needed.  We had variations of grilled and sauted prawns including cheese stuffed bacon wrapped prawns that we will have to figure out how to make at home.  It also was nice that happy hour featured 2 for 1 cocktails and margaritas.  We had some very yummy fresh mango margaritas that we will probably turn into a habit during this stay.  

The weather today started moderately cloudy so Ben had to toy with exposures to compensate for passing clouds.  By late afternoon, the sky had mostly cleared with bright blue skies above and puffy clouds on the horizon.  We hope the sky will give us a decent view of the totality tomorrow, after all the preparations and anticipation.