Today’s plans were going to be decided by the weather. If it was fine (or at least not raining), we
were going to go half an hour north of Quito taking the bus systems and head to
Mitad del Mundo, which is a monument where the centre of the world is. If it was raining, we were going to stay in
the city and head to Old Town to take a look.
Either way it was going to be a good day and we were going to be doing
both at some stage anyway. We awake to
an overcast day, no rain however. Our
decision was made for us, we are going to the centre of the world! We get ready and pack a day pack and head to
the bus stop. Here we catch the local
metro system, which is a long bus that has its own lane in the centre of the
road. We ride this until the last stop
and then catch another bus which takes us to Mitad del Mundo. We arrive and pay the entry fee of US$2 and
wander to the monument. It is a pretty
cool place, we get the usual photos of having our feet in different continents,
the north and south plants and also some feeble attempts of having photos
whilst holding the world in our hands (the monument has a globe at the
top). This site of the centre of the world was made
after numerous measurements in the mid 18th century. The monument is actually in the wrong spot,
the real equator is 300 metres north of the tourist ‘equator line’. More modern gps measurements have concluded
this. Not a bad attempt at estimating
the equator I guess considering the technology back in the day. Another activity we did was try to balance an
egg on a nail. I couldn’t do it, and I
blame the fact that we are not actually on the equator, if we were 300 metres
north I would have been able to balance that egg blindfolded.... yeah right!!!
There were also some measuring scales at the site. The reasoning for this was that apparently you
are supposed to weigh less on the equator than normal. Ann and I paid our 25 cents each and weighed
ourselves. We were considerably lighter
than normal. I know I have lost some
weight whilst travelling but definitely not this much! We have a theory that
the scales have been tampered with, but we decide to wait until we have googled
it (we later did and found out that you do indeed weigh less on the equator,
but only by about 0.5%, so the scales had definitely been tampered with). We have a look through the museum which is in
the middle of the monument and then decide to head back into Quito. At this time I start to feel a little unwell,
not again!!! When we get back to the hostel we decide to head to the
supermarket and get some dinner to cook and breakfast, Im feeling terrible at
this stage. We head back to the hostel and
Ann starts cooking tea while I go to bed.
Long story short, it was a terrible night, I vomited four times and had
a crook guts which was increasing my frequency to the toilet.
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