We have now been gone about 4 months. It is about the middle of our trip so we headed to Middle Earth! Quito has a whole park and museum about the equator. We went with our Swedish friend Regina, who we first met in Spanish school in Cuenca, then had Christmas with, then again at the beach after surgery and now again in Quito. She heads home next week so this was our last adventure together. I always thought of the equator as a black line, but it is yellow here! Did you know it is 5 kilometers wide? All the water swirling stuff is bunk by the way except for the oceans, I guess. It is also not as hot as I remember thinking it would be from grade school geography. Of course, I think the focus was on Africa not Ecuador!
Our biggest news is we have made some plans for the next 4 months! We will be leaving Ecuador for Peru, Chilli, and Argentina, the last week of Febuary . We have applied for a visa to Brazil and will get there by April 10th to board a repositioning cruise from Santos to Barcelona, arriving on the 24th. We would like to travel Spain, Portugal, some places and friends in France and head to The Netherlands and Denmark to see Derrick and Casper. We can be in the EU for 90 days only without more visa requirements. It is a lot and we would love company if anyone has any interest in joining in!!!
El Mital del Mundo
Surprise surprise! We ran into our Swedish friend Regina again!
We decided to have lunch and head out to El Mital del Mundo, the equator monument. She was taking Spanish here in Quito, and had a great recommendation. We each had the “Almuerzo,” which is a soup first course with a meat, rice, salad second course with fruit juice. These were $2.50 each.
We decided to take city buses out to the monument, instead of paying a taxi $30. It was 40 cents each, and probably much faster.
The monument was pretty good.
To much north/south
Too much south/north
Just right!
Turns out that the monument is about 240 meters off, although they claim that the equator is actually 5 km wide, and so this isn’t a problem. Across the road, is a hill that an old indigenous group build their own monument 7000 years ago. They hit the equator exactly.
Please read about Zika virus before heading to Brazil.
We plan to be in southern Spain (Andalusia) the last week in May but it sounds like you’ll be headed north by then.