Erin & Regan's South American Adventure
Mitad del Mundo and the old city.
Hola,
When we had finally recovered enough to feel like doing something we decided to take a quick trip to a place just outside of Quito called Mitad del Mundo (or, the middle of the world AKA the ecuator). Thatīs right, the Ecuator runs right through the middle of Ecuador, whoīd have thought.
To get there we jumped on a bus, which dropped us off at another bus station where we caught a 2nd bus to Mitad del Mundo. There is an official site here complete with a monument and other displays and things you can visit. Unfortunately the monument is 200m meters from the "real" ecuator as measured by GPS.
We hadnīt meant to go into the official one but we couldnīt see the other un-official site until after we paid (US$2 each) and entered the it, then over the wall we saw the other one. In the official site you have to pay again to visit each part so we took a quick photo of the monument then high-tailed it to the other site.
The unofficial site, called Intiņan (meaning path of the sun) actually costs more to enter (US$3 each) but includes a tour with a guide who lets you try out all the experiments like pouring water down a sink, balancing an egg on the head of a nail and so on.
In addition you get a tour of some native style houses and a brief history of their culture and lifestyle.
They even have a real shrunken head and some details on the process of how to go about shrinking a head.
They used to have a giant tortoise but it recently died. They had many jungle insects, snakes and snake skins on display. Plus a native blowgun, sadly the dart was missing so I didnīt get a turn.
This particular native tribe uses a piece of string to hold their genitalia, that does not look comfortable to me!
Some nets for fishing.
There were some native people living right here on the site, they perform weaving and sell their designs to visitors. Apparently as a child they have to learn a number of weavings off by heart and as they age they learn even more.
The obligatory "Iīm standing on the Ecuator" shot.
A native sun clock. The natives divided the day into only 3 parts, morning, mid-day and evening. The clock is double sided because for 6 months of the year the sun only shines on one side.
There were a number of native cactus here, Erin liked this one (sorry I forgot to rotate this photo!)
We returned to Quito by catching the first bus that rolled past the official Mitad del Mundo. It dropped us somewhere strange and eventually we caught a taxi to the local mall hoping to see a movie. Sadly the mall had no theater so we asked for directions to another one and walked there. It had movies but none in English so we decided to leave it for another day. I had Burger King for dinner and we caught a bus back to our hostal.
The next morning we got up and headed into the old city for a quick peek. The old city is full of big old buildings.
There were many strange people wandering through the city, including a group of monks... with a nice new backpack. I guess monks need good bags too. On the way back to the bus we stopped in at a shop selling glasses and they fixed my sunglasses (which had broken the day before) for free!
Sick of Quito we returned to our hostal, grabbed our bags and hopped a taxi to the terminal catching a bus to Latacunga.
