With the crowds of chasers along the beach and in town, it looked as if we had picked a perfect spot to watch the Shadow of the Moon approaching us.

From our vantage point looking down on the town of La Paz, we wait for the show to begin.

When the shadow finally swept across us I couldn’t believe my eyes. It got so dark all the street lights went on in the town below. Night!! But it wasn’t night. It was the monstrous Moon’s shadow fresh from a run across the open Pacific.  I watched as the monstrous Moon shadow cut through the sky heading straight for me at 3000 kilometers per hour.  The wind picked up and the temperature dropped. The sky was being cut in half! Through a piece of welder’s glass I watched the perfectly black disc of the Moon cross the final inch of the face of the Sun reducing it to a single sliver of brilliance. The town of La Paz faded into silhouettes before my eyes as the Moon’s veil of darkness swept up every living soul from west to east. Planets and stars appeared over my head in a sky that was now deeper and more magical than any twilight I had ever seen. I blinked, dropped my welder’s glass, and looked up with my naked eye as the Moon finally hid the last burst of sunlight behind its jagged edge. With the Sun now totally hidden behind the dark side of the Moon, I took my first few breaths in the Moon’s umbra - the alien world known as TOTALITY.

I shook off the goose-bumps as best I could but the hair on the back of my neck was up to stay. With my naked eye I could see past the edge of the Moon to the surface of the Sun where brilliant pink and red explosions of gas were leaping up into space. These prominences looked as if a crimson jewel-box had tumbled open from behind the black limb of the Moon. And burning in every direction was the atmosphere of the sun -  long, thin, luminescent streamers of gas and magnetism that cut into space like swords for 3 million kilometers in every direction!!

It was sublime.  It was as if our little spot on Earth had fallen out of time. It was as if we had been arrested in a dome of dark blue sky so the universe could peer in at us with its one giant eye to see if we were paying attention.  All of a sudden I was in a relationship with the universe.  I had never seen or felt anything like it before.

Six minutes and fifty seconds of totality marched across my face in an instant. I’m not sure if I breathed or not. When it was over, I was an eclipse chaser.

“The Diamond Ring” effect marks the beginning of totality in Baja July 11, 1991. photo Andreas Gada.