Feb. 9 - The "Equator"

So today I really wanted to sleep in, but I had already planned to have breakfast with Susy at 8 so that I could talk to her about the past week and let her know I was going to be living with her for the next two weeks. She was very pleased to hear that I would be with her longer. The only problem is that she had already arranged for someone else to stay for a few days around the 18th of February. I'm not sure if she said she would find another place for this person, or they were going to bunk in with me. I figure either way, I have my sleeping bag to sleep in if I have to share my bed.

Last night I had decided to meet up with my friends from school around 1:30pm, so I headed into town a little early to walk around the city and check my emails on the internet. I found this great little internet cafe overlooking a street in the Mariscal. I was quite enjoying watching the people in the building across the street go in and out, enjoying their lunch on the roof and took particular interest in this one guy who was smoking on the fire escape. It took a little while before I realized the person I was watching on the fire escape was Lee and the person eating lunch on the balcony was Meredith. I happened to pick a great seat overlooking the hostel that the school uses for those students who don't want to live with a family. Who knew I would turn into a peeping Tom when I headed down to South America. So to make sure I don't get that reputation, I headed across the street to say "Hi".

Lee was about to head out to explore the town, so I joined him as we walked around the Mariscal exploring some of the shops and two open air markets that were filled with crafts, artwork, and handcrafts made my local inhabitants. The colours in the artwork is out of this world and all from natural sources. After we had finished exploring we headed to our local bar (Coffee Tree again) and had a coffee while we waited for Anna to join us.

Once we had all gathered, we headed off to La Mitad del Mundo (The middle of the world). As with many things in Ecuador, the price for this was almost nothing. Even though it's about 20km outside of the city, we ended up spending $0.65 to get there, and it was only that high because we made a mistake and had to pay to get back on the bus. After about an hour of traveling and asking many people how to get there, we managed to find our way and arrived at the ecuator.

La Mitad del Mundo is probably the most touristy place in Ecuador, it's almost as if we stepped into Epcot Center's Ecuador Pavilion. It is filled with lots of shops, all selling the same things, restaurants all serving the same things, and "typical" Ecuadorian music. They even have a "museum" (notice the use of quotation marks...nothing here is real, it's all put together for the tourists....but you have to visit, just to say you did) where you can perform some experiments on the equator. These include flushing a toilet on each side of the equator to see how the water spins in different directions (when you are this close to the equator the hole in a toilet is too small to swirl in different directions so the toilets are designed to spin the water in opposite directions), discover how you weigh less on the equator (only about 0.02% less, but the scales are rigged to show you weigh about 2% less), and balance an egg on it's point (I dont' know about this one, I think it actually is real). Since it is all fake, we decided not to go.

The main attraction here is to straddle the equator by the monument which indicates the middle of the earth. The only problem is that this isn't the real equator (notice the fake theme here....I think Michael Eisnor helped design this place). Once GPS navigation came into existence they were able to determine the equator was actually 250m further north. Interestingly enough, the Incas had actually calculated the equator to be closer to the real equator than the French scientists who determined it was at this monument. Even though it wasn't the actual equator, we still stood on, stepped across and dumped over the "equator". No one is going to know it wasn't the real one (unless they read my blog).

Needless to say it didn't take long before we were bored with the place and headed back to the city (only $0.40 this time because a local lady took us under her wing and told us how to get home). That evening, instead of heading out we decided to head back to the hostel (where I was previously spying on everyone) for a few drinks and to have a chat. A very good way to end a relaxing day.