Despite the Covid, Chileans have flocked to observe the total solar eclipse
An indigenous Mapuche family observes the total solar eclipse in Carahue, La Araucania, Chile on Monday, December 14, 2020. AP - Esteban Felix
Text by: RFI Follow
2 min
Up to two minutes of complete darkness in the middle of the day is what the inhabitants of southern Chile experienced and observed on Monday.
This is the second total solar eclipse visible in the country in less than two years.
And despite the Covid-19 epidemic and mixed weather conditions, tens of thousands of Chilean tourists have come to observe the phenomenon.
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With our correspondent in Santiago,
Justine Fontaine
At 1:03 p.m. local time, thousands of masked people and equipped with special glasses were gathered in the squares of several cities in southern Chile, or on beaches, to try to observe the exact moment when the moon came between the sun and the planet Earth.
It was known for several days that clouds risked hiding the sky at the time of the eclipse, but the weather conditions did not discourage tourists: tens of thousands of people made the trip especially from different regions of the country. days.
And this while the government has banned since last week the inhabitants of the capital from leaving the greater Santiago, until further notice, to avoid the spread of Covid-19.
The authorities fear a second wave, because the
epidemic is on the rise again
across the country.
Some of the inhabitants did not see this eclipse as a festive event.
The Mapuche, the main indigenous people of Chile, see it as a bad omen.
Some families have organized ceremonies to pray to the spirits and forces of nature to spare them from possible catastrophes or undesirable events in the future.
The next solar eclipse in Chile is expected in 28 years.
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