The 4 December 2002 total eclipse was Phill’s third. He and his father booked a trip with Roy Mayhugh to see the eclipse in Kruger Park, South Africa. We arrived at the eclipse site and started to set up. The clouds were coming in and it didn’t look promising. There were several armed rangers there to ward off any approaching wildlife. We didn’t see first contact due to clouds. We did manage to see and photograph some of the partial phases. We couldn’t see anything through the viewers but could look directly as the clouds acted as viewers. The time of totality approached and the cloud cover was complete. We all looked the other way to see the moon shadow. The birds roosted and the day crickets went quiet. The night crickets started chirping. It got very dark in a matter of seconds. It was very eerie and quiet. After a minute it got light again and it was all over. Some of us looked out for the partial phases on the way out.
This was the 22nd eclipse of Saros 142. Totality lasted about 2 minutes from our viewpoint.