Mittad del Mundo

The monument at the wrong place
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There we were in Quito. Close enough to the equator to spit on it; so we decided to go and see it. Twice in fact.

The bus ride was - to my uninitiated sense of time - long. It took us a while to find the bus, and just as long to get to the equator. But get there we did, and we spat on it. (Andrea looks disapprovingly from her editor´s chair!)

The equator is not here?!

We saw the massive monument erected to commemorate the middle of the world, and took to obligatory tourist photos. One foot in each hemisphere, on the equator, in front of the monument, etc. The bus ride and all these tiresome photos (most of which we needed to queue for) had really taken it out of us and we needed to recouperate. Spotting a small restaurant, that´s exactly what we did over some foods I´d never even imagined existed a week before.

I said "one foot in each hemisphere, girls"
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After we´d lunched we went to go see the real center of the world. It seems the french got it wrong by about 200m. Not bad for people working it out using archaic tools such as sextants and maths! It took the might of GPS to show the world that the equator didn´t lie on the monument. No-one´s moved the monument though, and it still makes for a good background to the pictures.

The musuem at the equator was called Inti Nan. It was more focused on indiginous culture than the equator passing through it. Suppose it must take some time to absorb the fact that the center of the world passes through your museum rather than the competitions! We learned about shrunken heads, blowguns (I missed the target...) and how the dead were buried. Then we did some cool experiments: water really does go down the plug hole in different directions, no matter what they say on myth busters and brainiacs, it is possible to balance an egg on a nail on the equator, sun dials work in stereo, and that I may be less strong when balanced on the equator. A fun day though. And Arnie was on the bus on the way home, what could be better?