Ecuador- Quito/ Mitad del Mundo.

2-08-2011

Planned to walk around the old town. On our way there passed a Mahatma Gandhi statue, very random.

Climbed up the towers of La Basilica, one has the last bit of the stairs as ladders outside. My feet were tingling as I climbed them. I read a cool story about a lady saying how Ecuadorians are fearless while others always feel scared climbing up. She supposedly climbed up when she was 8 months pregnant to give her baby an adrenaline rush and make him fearless too. The views from there are great too. Went up to the bell tower later, ringing the bell allows you to make a wish. As a general rule I have made the same wish everywhere I have gone through most of my adult life. Childhood wishes were way more exciting, flying chairs, magic tree and the food box( a box where there is always something yummy, yup I went to a boarding school), quite obviously all from Enid Blyton books.

Change of plans, got on to a bus leading out of town to Mitad del Mundo ( the middle of the earth ). There is a large monument at the site of the equator line, found in the 18th century. They did pretty well it's only 240 meters away from the point as per the GPS. We went to the GPS site and had a guided visit of the small museum there.

Were shown shrunken heads , 150 years old. Learnt the process of shrinking heads, important ones were worn around the neck while the enemy heads were on the ends of the spears. Then saw an indigenous hut as well as pictures of some tribesmen(if the string around their waist is missing they consider themselves naked). If you were married to an important man and he died before you, bad luck, you were buried with him, eeks. Didn't work the other way round as the important man would have 2-3 wives.

Then for the experiments around the equator line. Water goes straight down at the equator line, a meter away to the north it went anti clockwise and to the south clockwise. At the equator line we both were able to balance eggs on a nail, even have certificates for it, able to push Jeevan's raised arms down easily but could not do it elsewhere. We were quite entertained.





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