The universe has gone beautifully awry. The temperature drops, daylight darkens eerily, dots of sunlight on the ground turn into crescents, sunlight on pale colors starts to ripple as though reflected through a swimming pool. Then the moon fully covers the sun — which instantly turns into a black dot in the sky surrounded by a diaphanous halo and stars and planets. If watching a total solar eclipse is not the most incredible experience you can have, it has few competitors.

A solar eclipse happens when the sun, moon and Earth line up (in that order) and the moon's shadow falls on the Earth. (A lunar eclipse happens when the sun, Earth and moon align, and the Earth's shadow falls on the moon.)

Once I saw one, I was hooked. I've chased total solar eclipses in Hawai'i, Chile and Curacao, always budget trips, never on a tour.

I saw my first total solar eclipse on the Big Island in 1991 with my husband, Michael. We decided a week before the event to witness the eclipse. Although we got tickets quickly using mileage, we couldn't find a hotel room or car rental.

I called the Big Island Visitors' Bureau, and the woman I spoke with said, "There's a guy near Hilo who's renting rooms in his home." When I called him, he asked, "Where did you get my name?" I told him. "Oh," he said, "you must have talked to my mom." Indeed. Kerry was a high school science teacher — a bonus as a host for our "scientific" trip — and we developed a lasting friendship, as my husband and I have with other eclipsophiles.

The morning of the eclipse we clambered to the top of a small volcanic cinder cone, from which we could see the countryside below and the sky above. Michael groused about getting up at 4 to see the 7 a.m. show, but when totality hit — when the moon completely covered the sun — he cheered for four minutes straight.

He wasn't alone. Everyone cheered.

Now unabashed total-solar-eclipse junkies, we started planning 18 months ahead for our second eclipse in 1994. Using NASA maps showing where totality would be and Air Force relief maps showing terrain of northern Chile, we selected the Atacama Desert, where rainfall has never been recorded. We wanted a location with good odds for clear weather.

Trying to get above as much atmosphere as possible, we settled on the village of Putre at 11,500 feet in the Andes. We weren't alone in this decision.

Hundreds of people crowded into the village the morning of the eclipse. We asked a youth in a black velvet top hat about his journey. "We're college students from London," he said. "We heard about it two weeks ago and thought it sounded cool." Here's proof that advance planning isn't necessary — the students got the same spectacular view we did.

One pleasure in seeing an eclipse is the shared experience, and we joined a hundred cheering eclipse converts in Putre who spontaneously formed a circle, held hands and danced on the hillside after totality.

Our third eclipse took us to Curacao in 1998. Less organized even than the British students, we planned a week in advance and used mileage to fly there.

On our scouting mission the day before the eclipse, we discovered that our planned viewing site, Christoffel National Park with its 1,238-foot peak, would be closed the next day — no doubt to protect the Caribbean desert from hundreds of single-minded eclipse gazers. We found a luxury hotel in a prime eclipse-viewing location which would allow us to eat a buffet lunch and stand on the property for $50 each; but a quarter-mile away, a free, public, white-sand beach embraced by black cliffs beckoned. We plotted which thatched, umbrella-like palapa we would secure in the morning.

Curacao had chafed under a 10-month drought — but when we awoke at 5 a.m., rain poured down. We wanted the palapa for sun protection — but it sheltered us equally well from the rain. For eight hours we agonized, waiting for clear skies.

Undeterred, a man near us had a cross-braced device for holding his video camera with No. 14 welder's glass attached to the front while he relaxed on a low chair in the sand. "I don't want to waste totality looking at a camera," he said. Others like him — with their homespun devices (and No. 14 welder's glass) — dug in along the shore.

The sky cleared completely only 20 minutes before totality, and the beach afforded a broad vista which added to the grandeur of our experience. Our reward for patience unfurled as the euphoric otherworldliness of totality.

Total solar eclipses occur around the globe, so they're an excuse for trips to far-away locales. You can experience them on your own or join a tour. The next one — on Mar. 29, 2006 — goes through parts of western Africa, Libya, Egypt, Turkey, the Caucasus, Kazakhstan, Russia and Mongolia. I'm counting my airline miles, searching travel books and probing the Internet to decide between Turkey, a country I love, or the Sahara Desert, a place I long to explore. Either way, we'll have an adventure chasing a total eclipse of the sun.

April Orcutt is an avid eclipse-chaser and writer who lives north of San Francisco.

TIPS FOR ECLIPSE CHASING

• Be sure it’s a total solar eclipse.
People who’ve seen a partial or annular eclipse may think they know what an eclipse is all about, but even 99 percent of totality (with the moon covering 99 percent of the sun) is nothing compared to a total solar eclipse because if it’s not total, you can never look without special viewers or see the transcendent solar corona — and that’s where the mystique lies.

• Never look at the sun.
Serious damage or blindness can result in a matter of seconds. During totality the moon completely covers the sun, so you can safely look at the black moon and the ethereal solar corona then, but the instant the sun begins to emerge from behind the moon, avert your eyes. If you want to see the partial phases of the eclipse, you can buy special eclipse viewers from observatories, science museums, Rainbow Symphony, www.rainbowsymphony.com/soleclipse.html or (800) 821-5122 or (818) 708-8400) — or Eclipse Glasses, www.eclipse-glasses.com.

• Maximize totality.
The narrow path of totality — the moon’s full shadow — across the Earth is roughly 100 miles wide. The shadow moves at more than 2,000 mph, so an eclipse exists in one spot for only a matter of seconds or minutes. You want to be at the shadow’s center — called the center line — that’s where the eclipse lasts the longest.

• Check weather records.
To increase your chance of seeing the eclipse, pick a location with clear weather. Then cross your fingers. Weather is fickle. All three locations where we saw eclipses traditionally excelled at dry weather on the strategic date, yet all three had fog, clouds, or rain on the morning of the eclipse.

Weather information for the Mar. 29, 2006, eclipse is at http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~jander/tot2006/2006totintro.html.

• Get a car.
You must have a car. If weather is poor, drive to clear skies. (Fog blanked out many astronomy tours in Kona, whereas mobile independent travelers drove until the sky looked clearer.)
Make sure the area you’ve selected has usable roads
otherwise you’re limited on where you can drive.

• Find a panoramic viewpoint.
Unlike the crimsons and vermilions of sunrise and sunset, the heavens glow in unusual shades of blues during the low light levels of totality. Dim sunlight comes from the “wrong” direction — high in the lapis- lazuli sky, not at the horizon — and a sweeping view of sky and land amplifies the uncanny ambiance.

The darkness exists because you’re in the moon’s shadow, and it confuses animals and plants. In Hawaiçi, we watched cows turn around and head for the barn. Birds settle down for nighttime. Diurnal flowers close their petals.

Check out viewing locations at least a day in advance at the time the eclipse will be to make sure the sun won’t be hidden by trees or cliffs.

• Find other things to do.
Choose an area you’d like to visit anyway — in case clouds eclipse your eclipse. Or at least be open to what you find.

While Curacao hadn’t been on our to-go-to list, the February eclipse coincided with Carnival, and we couldn’t ignore the zeal the locals threw into their resplendent feathered and sequined costumes, vigorous dancing, and Caribbean music-making while marching four miles across the island for several days in a row.

Don’t forget culinary side trips. When we stopped at Jaanchie’s outdoor restaurant on Curacao, colorful flouncy decorations and chirping yellow and black banana quits belied the macho entreaties of our waiter: “To be a virile man, eat iguana.”