The Equator

We managed to leave Quiito city centre for once and went to visit the equator yesteday. It was our first out of town trip in South America on public transport and I must admit I was a bit nostalgic for the spittle of Laos!

After we changed buses nearly everyone got off at one place so we decided we must be there (the whopping great monument was a bit of a giveaway too) but I was determined not to miss our stop. Falling asleep on the train and ending up at Stansted Airport is one thing, arriving in the wrong hemisphere would have been shocking, even for me.

Bec is standing either side of the fake equator, a French explorer got his sums wrong and said it was here, so they built the thing you see, then GPS was invented and they realised the real equator was in fact 240m to the north. Bruno, any comments?

So, you leave one place go 50m along the road and enter another outdoor museum. Here you are shown various Jonny Ball type tricks: less gravitational pull on equator so easier to pull another person´s arms apart, water flowing in different directions just 1 metre apart and a 2 faced sun dial. No that doesn´t mean that if it doesn´t like you it gives you the wrong time.

The rest of the photos are refusing to upload, so that´s it for now. Funny though isn´t it that I never felt the urge to take any pics on Meridian Way in Enfield or at Greenwich, when we lived round the corner, of longitude 0` 0`0".

We´re trying to sort out a trip to the jungle and a stay in Galapogos at the moment for when we finish school so that the Spanish we learn here can slip from our minds while we talk to other English speaking tourists!