The middle of the world

---

We flew from Costa Rica to Quito and into an altitude of 2800m. We were ready for the slightly dizzy/possible feeling sick side effects of the altitude but not the cold! It was a shock coming from Costa Rica and a balmy 35 degrees to rain and cold..(In reality it probably wasn´t that cold, but we had aclimitised to the heat of Central America). So, we had a couple of days in Quito when we got back from the Galapagos Island and ended up staying at The Secret Garden (a hostel that had come highly reccomended - Thanks Suze!) and it was just as fab as promised. A maze of rooms split over four storeys (definitely feeling breathless climbing up there several times a day!) with a very cool roof terrace and incredible view over the city. They serve really good food up there too, and it was a great place to hang out with other travellers. We couldn´t come to Quito and not visit the ´Mitad del Mundo´(Middle of the world or Equator to most of us), even though we were warned it was touristy and not even in the right place! Apparantly the French who built the Equator monument were 240metres out as proven by GPS. I guess in their defence the monument was built 270 years ago... A big day in all. First of all we shot up the Teleferiqo which is a cable car to the top of one of the "hills" around Quito. This cable car takes you from 2850 meters to 4100... and a pretty impressive view over the ctiy. You can actually see planes flying in over the city to land BELOW you! After the mission to the top and back we jumped onto the tram/bus system for the trip out to Mitad del Mundo. An hour and half of dusty boredom later... arrived at the cheesy complex with heaps of empty restaurants and souvenier shops and the big ugly monument with the red Equator line on the ground. A few obligatory photos and about 5 mintues later and we were done... We had read about another place up there called the Solar Museum which claimed to be closer to the actual Equator and had some cool water and light displays that were supposed to "blow your mind"; plus it was free so we went in. Ended up being a research project by "unspecified group" into some Inca ruins that were on the actual Equator (as proven by GPS) at the top of a nearby mountain. These ruins are in exact alignment with the actual equator and fall into exact lines with all of the Equinox's/Solstice's etc. Kind of puts the French to shame though; the ancient Inca could get it spot on a thousand or so years ago and they couldn't. The presentation was actually really interesting (interesting enough to convince us to buy T-shirts...) even if the guy was a bit freaky ("Do you know? Do you?.. no you don't!")... obviously really really passionate about the subject and their "mission". After leaving (and that weird hypnotised sensation wearing off) we realised that there hadn't been any cool displays at all; but we still like the T-shirts.

---