I wanted Quito to be the starting point of our trip so I could straddle the Equator. It turned out this was a little more difficult than I initially expected. A French expedition to measure the roundness of the earth marked the location of the equator north of Quito in 1736. The current Mitad del Mundo monument was built on that location in 1979. The problem is that the French were a little off the mark in 1736. The monument is at latitude 0°0'7".
A private museum is located right next door to the national monument. It advertises a GPS measured Equator exhibit... but guess what, it was measured with civilian GPS over 15 years ago so it isn't accurate either. The modern civilian GPS on my camera noted that the advertised GPS measured Equator is at 0°0'3".
We arrived at the Mitad del Mundo Monument first and weren't really aware of the second museum. Mitad del Mundo makes for a few good pictures but comes off as a huge tourist trap. There is a fee to enter the park and then another fee to enter the monument. There were a few additional small exhibits in the park which were not entirely captivating (at least some of these were free).
We had heard that Mitad del Mundo is not actually on the Equator so we looked around a bit but quickly got discouraged and hopped on a bus back to Quito. I was reviewing the GPS tags on several photos I had taken when I realized that the actual Equator must have been on the other side of the park from where we caught the bus. I quickly convinced Pratima that we had to go back. We jumped off the bus (literally, the driver doesn't wait for everyone to get off before he pulls away) at the next stop and walked toward the monument until we reached another bus stop. Along the way, we passed a local butcher's shop which was slightly different than we're accustomed to in the States.
The privately operated GPS measured Equator museum was just a short dirt roadside path away from the National Monument we had seen earlier. It was a lot more entertaining and the guide was quite funny. There was a lot of information about the indigenous tribe that recognized the location as the middle of the world over a thousand years ago. But, there are a bunch of gimmicky experiments to demonstrate the scientific properties of the Equator. Most were silly and fun even if they have no basis in science. For example, balancing an egg on the head of a nail. At this particular task, Canadian, Japanese, and American tourists in our group competed for national pride. Canada is off to surprising lead...
Noting the 0°0'3" GPS latitude location on the photos we were taking, we left the museum and wandered around for a few minutes until we found a rather unimpressive ditch next to a construction site where my camera measured the latitude as 0°0'0". I wasn't exactly envisioning a ditch next to a construction site when I picked Quito for our first stop but it was fun getting there.
