Casa Ventola

This week, I’m living in a villa on a vineyard about 9km North of Tarragona, on the East coast of Spain.

Under nearly-cloudless skies and surrounded by trees and olive and grape-laden slopes, a stone villa and its outbuildings sit prominently under the bright sun. — Gotta say, it’s a pretty place to walk the grounds of.

A large part of our choice of location for this trip was, of course, the total solar eclipse that’s expected this evening, whose path of totality just barely passes over this spot before disappearing somewhere over the Mediterranean.

A red and orange sunset with beams reaching up over the hilly horizon of climatically- Mediterranean farmlands. — We tested by watching a couple of sunsets that, at the time of day the eclipse will occur, the sun will still be visible over the horizon.¹

26 years ago, almost to the day, I blogged about witnessing the 1999 solar eclipse from Paris, where we were fortunate enough that Europe’s cloudy conditions on that day broke just in time for a midday totality and a proper “diamond ring” occlusion. I’m not confident I’ll ever see an eclipse quite so spectacular again in my lifetime, but I’m hopeful!

Obviously the eclipse is a primary deciding factor in our location this summer, but this family holiday’s about more than just seeing the sun vanish and hoping that it comes back out again.

A freshwater turtle swims close to the rocky shore of a blue-green lake, peeping its head above the water. — For example, we’ve also braved the August heat for a variety of outings around the area, such as to the beautiful botanic gardens of Parc Samà where we met this curious little turtle.

I’ve been out geocaching a lot on the mornings, for example, as is my way when visiting any foreign country! I’ve enjoyed taking advantage of being a naturally earlier-riser than most of my family, coupled with the cooler morning temperatures, to explore the hills and forests of this region. And look: I found my thousandth ever geocache!²

The one downside³ of our accommodation is the lack of connectivity. There’s no wired Internet here, and the hilly location and stone walls make acquiring a reasonable cellular signal… challenging.

Dan, a white man with a short 'goatee' beard and a blue ponytail, sits in the drivers' seat of a left-hand drive car with a laptop perched between his belly and the steering wheel, giving a sarcastic grin to the camera. — To look into a *Three Rings* issue this morning, I first needed to drive down the hill and around the valley a short way to get line-of-sight to a cellular tower, in order to get more than one bar of 5G signal and tether myself a reasonable Internet connection!

Anyway: it’s beautiful and bright (and scorchingly hot!) out here, and I’ve got my fingers crossed for clear skies in eight hours’ time. Here’s hoping!

Footnotes

¹ Without clouds in the way, the prettiest pictures of sunsets occurs just after this point, of course. I’ve spared you seeing a photo of an unoccluded sun, which – depending on the brightness fidelity of your screen – you’d possibly need to wear special shades to look at anyway?

² I know, I know: I’ve been geocaching for sixteen years – I “should” have found more than that by now. Well, I’m pretty laid-back about the sport, and often only target caches with a reasonable number of positive reviews or that are otherwise interesting to me. I’m not so-interested in making the “number go up” as I am in exploring interesting places and seeing cool things.

³ Or is it an upside? It’s certainly keeping my focus on the world around me and away from screens!