Quito

Had a couple of days before going to the Galapagos so I used one of them to go to this place in Quito that’s on the Equator. It’s very near Mitad Del Mundo which is a huge monument made hundreds of years ago to mark the line of the earths equator. There is a museum at Mitad too which I didn’t bother going to as it’s not located on the line at all. Whether the equator has moved since they built it or they just got it a bit wrong is debatable but thanks to some global positioning equipment loaned from the army there is now the Middle Of The Earth museum located exactly on the equator a couple of hundred meters down the road.

We were given a tour which had information on Ecuadorian history including seeing a real human shrunken head and step by step instructions on how to do it - although these days they only use monkeys. Because the museum is located exactly on the equator they can do a few scientific demonstrations there so we got to watch water go down a sink hole clockwise then moved a couple of meters to the equator where it went straight down and then a couple more and it went anticlockwise.

We did some strength tests on each other and found you are a bit weaker when standing on the line, then (after a bit of practice) balanced an egg on the head of a nail and got a certificate for it. Although I’ve never tried balancing an egg on a nail when not on the equator so I can’t vouch for how much it helped on that one.