Mazatlán expects an economic influx of one billion pesos, resulting from the visit of 750,000 tourists, considering the period of Holy Week and the current Easter Week, plus the event that will take place on Monday, April 8, which will be the solar eclipse, with Mazatlán being the epicenter for its observation. Therefore, the port will have a 100 percent hotel occupancy, that is, a total full house, reported Ricardo Velarde Cárdenas, the head of the Office of the Secretary of Tourism.
During a joint conference with the heads of all government agencies involved in the preparation of the operation for the solar eclipse, the official responsible for tourism in the state, anticipated an unprecedented weekend for Sinaloa, as due to this astronomical phenomenon, the fullness of Mazatlán, which recorded 95 percent during Holy Week, was satisfactorily extended, and now it is expected to exceed that level and reach 100 percent.
“The combination of this high season of Easter Week, with this week that is extended by two days with the great natural phenomenon of the solar eclipse, will undoubtedly be an unprecedented and historic week for the state of Sinaloa,” he highlighted.
Velarde Cárdenas informed that during this period of just over two weeks, the visit of 750,000 tourists to Mazatlán is expected, which will generate an economic influx of one billion pesos, and he highlighted that a large part of this number of tourists will be new visitors, that is, people who did not know the port and who will now visit it to witness the solar eclipse next Monday.
In this regard, he specified that it is about foreign tourism, as reservations have already been confirmed for visitors from much of the United States, such as Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Minnesota, Seattle, and Chicago, as well as groups of Asian tourists from Japan and also from Germany. Similarly, there is the attendance of a group of NASA scientists, who are currently in Mazatlán to observe this phenomenon.
For her part, Catalina Esparza Navarrete, the head of the Office of the Secretary of Public Education and Culture, confirmed that on Monday, April 8, there will be a suspension of classes at all educational levels in Sinaloa, which was the date of return from Holy Week vacation, but now the new restart date will be Tuesday, April 9, one day after the eclipse.
Regarding this astronomical phenomenon, the official recalled that the SEPyC, in coordination with the Sinaloa Science Center, prepared well in advance for this date, and since September of last year, began a training workshop for 6,200 teachers, with the purpose of giving a pedagogical sense to this natural event.
“As we already reported, the workshop called Solar Eclipse 2024 was carried out in two stages, which began on September 19, 2023, and concluded on March 13, 14, and 15 of this year, with the support of the Sinaloa Science Center, and CONFIE, who kindly trained 6,200 group teachers and pedagogical technical advisors,” she said.
In turn, Dr. Martha Zaraín Herzberg, representative of the General Coordination for the Promotion of Scientific Research and Innovation of the State of Sinaloa (CONFIE), announced that the Sinaloa Science Center will carry out a program of activities on the occasion of the solar eclipse, and will project on giant screens the images generated by two telescopes that will be directed at the sun, to record the entire process of the eclipse and can be safely observed by the population and children who attend this facility in the state capital.
Source: Press Release
