Middle Earth

Today our adventure took us to the middle of the world!  Ecuador’s name comes from its location straddling 0 degrees latitude and the key role it played in the history of mapping the equator.  It is one of the few places in the world where the equator is reasonably accessible and not in the middle of an ocean, jungle, or desert.

At the equator just north of Quito there is a museum, exhibits, tourist shops and one large and conspicuously misplaced monument.  The monument at La Mitad Del Mundo (the middle of the world) was placed on the site where in 1736 French explorer and scientist Charles-Marie de la Condamine located the equator using traditional astronomical methods of the time.  We now know using modern global positioning (GPS) technology that he missed the mark by about 600 ft. 

So, we visited the monument but we also spent some time touring the museum that now stands on the actual line.  During our tour we enjoyed standing on the equator and trying a number of experiments that supposedly only work at the middle of the earth.  We saw unique sundials that only work on the equator, tried standing eggs on end, attempted to walk a straight line, and witnessed water draining from a basin without the usual swirl. (Because of the rotational forces of the earth, water draining from a basin should swirl counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern hemisphere. At the equator, rotational forces should cancel each other out and there will be no swirl at all. Or so some people claim. Try it. What do you think?)  During our tour, we also learned about traditional Ecuadorian culture, including the custom followed by some Ecuadorian tribes of shrinking the heads of their enemies.  Yikes!