Mitad del Mundo

Our friend Leza is in town and we've waited until she got
here to do some of the more touristy things in Quito. Today,
we visited Mitad del Mundo (Middle of the Earth). It's one of
the few places in Ecuador (which literally means Equator in
Spanish) that you can visit the Equator and not be in the
middle of a jungle.

This is the view from the top of the monument at Mitad del
Mundo. It's very touristy and with the advent of GPS, it was
determined about 10 years ago that the monument is actually
off by about 240 meters!


Lynn posing at the monument. It's still fun to have your photo
snapped here even though it's in the wrong place.


Our friend Leza had a good time and later posed in front of the
monument wearing a shirt from her alma mater, The University
of Denver.


The correct equatorial line lies at a nearby park called the Museo
de Sitio Intinan. With correct GPS measurement, it really does lie
at Latitude 00:00:00.


Now that both of us have been to the Geographic South Pole and
on the Geographic Equator, we only have the North Pole left for
the hat trick!


This is right after Lynn successfully balanced an egg on it's end
on the Equator. There were some kind of hokey, but fun experiments
that we participated in, including making water go down a drain three
different ways. Overall we enjoyed the Museo with the correct
measurement more than the Mitad del Mundo park.