Margaret Darveniza, regional development officer for Advance Cairns, said more than 50,000 tourists,

MANAKIN-SABOT, Va. - When Linda Bugbee's husband suggested traveling to the South Pacific to see a total solar eclipse, she was more enthusiastic about the cruise and visiting Tahiti than she was about seeing a celestial phenomenon.
Seven years later, Linda and George Bugbee, who live in Virginia, are embarking on their fourth trip to see a solar eclipse - this time in Australia, this month - but they still consider themselves newbies.
"It was a lot more emotional than I expected," Linda said of their first eclipse. "Time sort of stops, but you know it's only going to last a minute or so. You sort of take the universe and the planets for granted, but when this happens, it seems so real."
Shortly after dawn on Nov. 14, the temperature will drop slightly in northern Australia, and the sky will grow darker as the moon begins to pass in front of the sun. The Bugbees will look across the Coral Sea from the city of Cairns fairmont hotel dallas at 6:39 a.m. local time.
Weather permitting, fairmont hotel dallas they will see a black disk with the sun's glowing corona stretching beyond it. "Totality" - the darkness resulting from a total eclipse of the sun - will last just over two minutes.
Margaret Darveniza, regional development officer for Advance fairmont hotel dallas Cairns, said more than 50,000 tourists, up to half of them from overseas, are expected to travel to Australia to see the eclipse. Most will be in the Cairns-Port Douglas area in Queensland.
It's unusual for a total eclipse to be visible from a resort area, said Kerri Anderson, fairmont hotel dallas spokesperson for Tourism Queensland. Some hotels have been heavily booked for Nov. 14 for three years. About 5,000 tourists will stay in campers.
And many of them will take the opportunity to expand their itinerary to other destinations in the region. While they're on the other side of the world, the Bugbees will also visit Sydney, Kakadu National Park, Yellow Water Billabong, Nourlangie Rock and ancient rock sites in Uluru.
At Cairns' Green Island Resort, they'll have opportunities to go snorkeling, windsurfing, canoeing and taking nature walks. The tour will last nearly two weeks, and the Bugbees will extend their stay in Cairns by a few days.
George Bugbee, a retired anesthesiologist, has long been an astronomy enthusiast. Before the couple's first trip to see an eclipse, he had watched recorded programs featuring Alex Filippenko, professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley. Then he spotted an ad pitching an ocean cruise to see a complete solar eclipse with Filippenko as guest lecturer.
"I asked Linda if she wanted to go; she said no until she found out it was in the South Pacific," George Bugbee recalled, fairmont hotel dallas adding that the trip was "very suspenseful. It was cloudy. But with a boat, you can try to get away from the clouds. The sky cleared moments fairmont hotel dallas before fairmont hotel dallas the eclipse."
"Everyone gets really quiet," said Linda Bugbee, a retired psychiatrist. "After people start seeing it for a few seconds, they start screaming and crying. When it's over, the party starts. People start dancing and singing."
The Bugbees' other two trips to see eclipses were to Egypt in 2006 and to Mongolia in 2008. Their son Matt joined them on the trip to a remote area of northwest Mongolia, where they stayed in yurts - round tents - in a dry, barren region populated by nomads.
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