Quito, etc.

Our last day in Ecuador....

Today, we joined up with Sarah and James, and took a trip to the equator. We first visited the official monument, which was really quite bizarre. They have this monument that is on the equator, as it was measured in the 1700's.

And inside the monument, they have a fairly crappy ethnographic museum. However, all around the monument (and after the gate where you pay to get in) is a small village of shops and restaurants. Kate thought it looked a bit like EPCOT's version of Latin America, and it did resemble that, insomuch as you have to pay to get into a place where you just buy other things.

The village from atop the monument

After the "official" monument, we went down the street to a museum at the "real" equator. This museum claims that they are on the real equator, since they used GPS to measure it. We agree with their reasoning, over that of an 18th century explorer with a sextant.

This museum was really neat. They had some ethnographic stuff, including a blow gun that we got to try out.

Yoel kind of sucked with the blow gun

Kate was able to hit the target multiple times!

And then they did a bunch of scientific experiments, to "prove" that we were on the real equator. These included showing us that water goes down the drain in a different direction on either side; balancing an egg on its end on a nail; and our favorite: the "walking the line sobriety test", where if you try to walk down the equator, the gravitational forces on either side won't let you walk straight.

Yoel's balanced egg

Kate also balanced her egg (they gave us special certificates for achieving this)

Afterwards, we went back to the hotel and napped a bit, and then went to dinner at a place we had seen earlier, which boasted that it had "the most draft beers in Ecuador". When we got there, it turned out that there was a locked gate, and a security guard had to let us in, which doesn't bode well for the safety of that neighborhood. When we got inside, we found out that "the most draft beers" means 4 micro-brews, and none of them were very good. They made reasonably decent nachos though, but we didn't stick around to play pool, because we didn't want to be walking through that neighborhood too late at night.