I had a “lightbulb moment” recently about something I have been asked twice in a café after ordering my food. Both times, the waiter had taken our order and then looked and me and asked “Holandésa?” to which I replied, “No, gracias”, thinking “Why on earth would I want Hollandaise sauce on my sandwich??” Eventually I twigged that both times they were actually asking if I was Dutch. Duh!
Anyway, this is now our 2nd visit to Quito, but after one night back at the pre-Galápagos hotel near the airport (with the mad dogs), we moved into the centre of town to a lovely hostel for another two nights, right in the Centro Histórico, recommended to us by our Auckland friend, Bernie. Perfect location, very cheap and great for exploring the city on foot. One of the things all tourists should really do when visiting Quito is to stand with one foot on either side of the Equator line, which is about 20 miles north of Quito in an area called El Mitad del Mundo (the centre of the world). You can do half-day organised tours to it, but we decided to by local bus, which seemed far more of a challenge, given the language barrier and ignorance of the area. The first bus was 25 cents, the second was 15 cents for a journey of one and a half hours. How’s that for value for money? It warned the cockles of my Scottish heart.
There is a monument at the Equator, which was discovered back in the 1500s but it is actually not the true Equator line, which is around 240 metres up the road. I learnt a lot about strange things that occur on the equator which I’ll share with you:
1. Due to the location of the Mitad del Mundo and the centrifugal force, you always weigh one kilogram less there. Naturally this gave us carte blanche to eat lots and lots of fattening food while there, to compensate for the shortfall.
2. During the equinoxes of 21 March and 21 September, the sun’s rays fall exactly perpendicularly to the Earth, causing shadows to completely disappear at Midday
3. The equator line is actually a strip 5 kms wide and the exact position of the line constantly moves within that 5km Equatorial strip, due to the Earth’s changing physical forces of rotation etc
4. It’s a complete myth that the water drains out of a sink clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and anti-clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere, although they do fake this for the tourists at the Mitad del Mundo. It does apply to much larger bodies of water though and it’s called the Coriolis effect.
So there you go, things you always wanted to know about the Equator line, but were never really interested enough to ask :o)
We enjoyed our 2nd stay in Quito, exploring the centre of the city and trying to avoid the Pope, who arrived the day after us, which was very inconsiderate of him. The centre of Quito is quite picturesque, with lots of beautiful churches and ancient buildings and it has a nice feel to it, although the rest of the city didn’t do a lot for us. The morning we left for the airport to fly south to Cuenca, we were warned that it could take up to two hours to get out to the airport because of the Papal visit, so we duly ordered our taxi for 8.15am, for our 10.30 check-in. Our taxi driver obviously pictured himself as a driver in the movie “Fast and Furious”, because he drove at 120kms per hour most of the way, swerving his way round other cars and buses, and we had screeched to a halt outside the airport exactly 45 minutes later. As is normal in Ecuador, there were no rear seat-belts in the taxi and as he was talking on his cellphone while driving a MANUAL car, he occasionally had to take both hands off the steering wheel in order to change gear.
Miraculously, we made it in one piece and then of course had hours to wait hours before we actually boarded our plane to Cuenca, about an hour’s flight south. Still, they have free,fast WiFi there and good lattes so we were pretty happy.
2 Frosty Tops Do South America 