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Published: April 24th 2014
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Hola from Quito, Ecuador!
So, I am finally in South America yay!My flight arrived in the middle of the night so I was picked up by Omar and his wife from my hostel and they took me to my room (trying desperately not to wake everyone up!)
My first day in Quito I went on a walking tour of the city, led my the lovely Obi. My hostel is situated right next to the Old Town so we got to see so many beautiful buildings, I just wanted to take pictures of everything! First of all, we visited the market and saw some different looking fruits. I treated myself to a smoothie which was lovely. After, we walked around the city and went inside one of the many churches. So beautiful inside. We were then brought to a chocolate shop and shown the process of how chocolate was made, trying a little bit of Ecuadorian chocolate (yum). I wanted to visit a cocoa farm while I was here but, as I am running out of time, I decided that the small intro to the process will do. Obi then brought us for some Ecuadorian food. I chose catfish in
a curry type sauce. It was nice but a bone got stuck in my gum which wasn't too pleasant to yank out haha.
That evening, I went out with some of the people in my hostel to the pub quiz. The proceeds of the quiz go to an organisation called Project Nadena that gives women skills and a means of earning a dignified wage by selling what they have made. It also provides spaces for children to play and be children. As wages are low, children are sometimes forced to work. The project lets them be children for a while! The quiz - so many questions about what is going on in England right now that I didn't know..think I'm going to have to look at the news more often!! PS..we didn't win!
The next day, I arranged with two girls that i met to go to Mitad del mudo...middle of the earth at the equator line. I had to get some money from the cash machine and I found myself wondering around Quito trying to find a ATM that would let me withdraw money. Someone had told me their card had been blocked when they got here
and that had probably happened to mine. I had no credit on my phone and it would be too expensive if I asked the hostel to use their phone so i wasn't sure what to do. Suddenly, I remembered that my friend, Sam, had given my a Skype card with credit before I left England. Lifesaver! I rang the bank and they put me through to the fraud team as my card had been declined. I have been travelling for six months, been to various different countries, and never had my card declined. The lady on the phone said I should have told my bank all the countries I was going to and I explained that i did go into the bank and tell them, grrr. I gave her a list of the next four countries I would be visiting so that I wouldn't be left in that situation again.
I could get money out and, after two hours of messing around with my card, finally we could set off to Mitad del Mundo. We got two different buses to get there (25 cents each...bargain!). There is a ten metre monument where, in 1743, Louis Godin, Pierre Bouguer and
Charles Marie de la Condamine, a team of scientists, worked out where the equator line was. Later on, a monument was built to commemorate this mission. Nowadays, using GPS it is found that the equator line actually lies about 200metres away so we visited both lines. The more up-to-date line had a museum also attached. A lady brought us around and shared some information about the Ecuadorian environment and culture. One of the more fascinating things was the real shrunken head I saw. A tribe in Ecuador would cut off the heads of defeated warriors, remove the skull then sew up the mouth and eyelids. The head was then soaked in boiling water and herbs, removed from the boil and... tadah!!..a shrunken head! This would be then worn by other warriors around their necks to show who they had defeated. Some people still do it today when important people die, their heads are cut off and shrunk in this manner and then put on display. Crazy!
She then showed us something like a sundial and correctly told us the time without a watch. We were then asked us to try and balance an egg on a nail head. Impossible
surely! I did it though! Apparently, the force of gravity at the equator pulls straight down which means the liquidy inside of the egg would be pulled straight down, making it easier to balance. I have tried to research about a proper explanation but people seem very sceptical that it only works on the equator line...something to try when I am back home. Will it work I wonder! We were then shown the plug being pulled from a basin. On the equator line the water goes straight down, creating no whirlpool. She then showed us on either side of the line and they both created a swirl in opposite directions. I remember when I went to see Sophie in Australia we wanted to see if the water moves the other way down the plug hole from the UK and it did 😊 We were told this is why no hurricanes or tornados can hit the Ecuator as wind cannot swirl around just like the water. Think I've explained that properly!
As I write this, I am waiting around before I get my 8 hour bus to the Amazon rain forest. I am off on a 4 day tour. I'll
let you know how it was.
Lots of love, Emma xxx
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