“It’s surreal, it’s beautiful, it’s scary…and the first one I saw, I thought the world was going to end,” said Bob Bonadurer, the planetarium director at the Milwaukee Public Museum.
Bonadurer will lead a sold-out tour to view
This year, around 40 fellow stargazers will fly with Bonadurer to spend, “a seven-day, six-night solar eclipse trip to Chile from June 28 through July 4,
The first three days will be spent in and around Santiago, where Bondurer says that guests will be given several tours and day trips. Afterward, the next three days will be spent camping in the Andes.
However, Bonadurer went on to say that most of their time on the day of the eclipse might be spent “on the road” to get the best possible view of totality (the total solar eclipse).
“We’re going to be driving around the Andes, but if it’s cloudy… we’ll go over to the coast,” Bonadurer went on to say.
“You have to plan your trip so you’re mobile,” stresses Bonadurer.
This is not only a principle he builds into the museum’s total solar eclipse trips, but also suggests to those interested in viewing the eclipse outside of the tour group. It can be equally important to consult past weather charts to ensure that the totality is visible and not covered by clouds or rain, the planetarium director added.
Perhaps it’s because of these precautions that Bonadurer says that he’s never completely missed any of the five total solar eclipses he’s witnessed since his first in Aruba in 1998.
Beyond the current trip to Chile, Bonadurer mentioned he’s considering organizing future trips to witness natural phenomena such as the aurora borealis.
“Recently there’s been other trips that people have been done, and it has been brought up here [the museum] so we might take a trip to Norway, or Alaska, or Iceland,” said Bonadurer.
In addition, the director said he has already begun consulting weather charts and looking at hotels in preparation for the total solar eclipse on April 8th, 2024 that will be in Texas.
However, despite the relative closeness, “If you don’t travel to see a total solar eclipse you’re probably not going to see one,” Bonadurer said.
Milwaukee won’t be in the path to see the next total solar eclipse until 2099, so Bonadurer urges those interested to travel and plan well.