Mitad del Mundo

While all the guidebooks make it seem like it's easy to just hop the bus to Mitad del Mundo, the equator, I learned differently.  The two guidebooks gave completely different directions, so I started out following the ones that were closer to my house.  After waiting a half-hour for the bus that supposedly comes every 5 min, I asked someone nearby if that bus comes here.  They told me that I needed to go about 10 blocks down to a different street.  I walked over there and on the way stopped and asked at a hotel, they told me to go back to where I was originally.  After getting two more different sets of directions, I stopped to buy a bottle of water and asked the store clerk.  He told me that all the other directions were garbage and actually gave me the directions that ended up being correct.  It took me about as long to get the correct directions as it did to ride the 23 km north to Mitad del Mundo.

The official monument to the equator

The official Mitad del Mundo (Middle of the World) is a large monument with a line on the ground marking where the equator supposedly is.  They also have some museums on the grounds that really weren't worth the couple of bucks admission.  On Sundays they have bands and dance performances in the little plaza, which I enjoyed.

The "Unofficial" Equator

After spending some time at the official monument to the equator, I walked around the side of the facility to the museum with the real equator.  It turns out that all of the calculations they had done many years ago to determine the location of the equator were all wrong.  About 10 years ago, after GPS was invented, it was determined that the real equator is actually about 200 meters away from where they had previously thought.  They re-did all of the old calculations and found out that oops, they had made a mistake.  So now there's an unofficial museum over at the real equator.

The unofficial museum was much, much better than the official museum and monument.  In addition to the equator line, they have recreated huts to show how the indigenous people of the area used to live.  They give guided tours in Spanish and English telling you all about what life used to be like there.  The tour was really good and well worth the $3.

A Shrunken Head

At the end of the tour, you do experiments to "prove" that you're on the actual equator.  The first one they show you is how water swirls in different directions north and south of the equator, while it has no vortex on the equator.  I'm pretty sure this one is a load of crap, but I can't figure out exactly what the trick is and haven't taken the time to research it and see if it really could happen.

After the water trick, there were a couple of tricks to show you that your strength changes on the equator.  Off of the equator, if you hold your thumb and forefinger together as tight as you can, someone else would have a lot of trouble trying to pull them apart.  On the equator though, they can easily separate them.  The final trick involved balancing an egg on the head of a nail, something that's supposedly only possible on the equator or during an equinox.  Because I was successfully able to balance it, I got a very official looking certificate that will be in the trash can before I leave Quito.

Balancing an egg on the equator

It was an interesting day and I'm glad I visited there, although it's definitely one of those things you don't need to see more than once.  Going home I ended up catching a bus that went to a different part of Quito, but thankfully the guy who helps the bus driver by collecting fares, calling out the stops, etc, helped me change to a bus that took me where I wanted to go.  Not bad for $1.30 for the round-trip ride.

The Official Equator