Visiting the Equator in Ecuador

The blog site was down and then I was on a boat in the Galapagos Islands so here is the post from May 12 2011: This is a picture noting my success at balancing an egg on top of a nail at the Equator. I received a certificate and everything; two as a matter of fact because I was able do it twice. Today I visited the Equator and it was really fun. I went with two women from my Galapagos group. We took the local bus out the Equator for 40 cents and had a blast on the bus. There are forever people getting on and selling stuff. My favorite was the ice cream guy with his 25 cent cones. It was an easy adventure with two bus changes and no problems. There are people selling $45 US tours, I think ours was great with 80 cents spent on transport and $6 spent to climb the tower and visit two museums at the “center of the world” as they like to call it.

At the one museum we got to try different experiments. One was the spinning water test. In the northern and southern hemispheres the water spins as it goes down the drain and right on the equator the water goes straight down the drain with no clockwise or counterclockwise movement. It was cool to just move a portable sink 1m each way off the equator to test this. Then we did the balance an egg on a nail in which I was the only one able to do it and I did it twice. Then there was the sobriety test. You have to close your eyes and try to the walk the line. The forces pulling your body and making you wobble feel incredible.

You have also got your discrepancies with where the actual line is and then lots of different photo opportunities with different things in the background along the line. You have your GPS equator line and your tourist equator line. There were also lots of school groups at the equator, what a cool class trip, sign me up.

Well it is an early 5:30am start tomorrow with an early morning flight to catch the boat to the Galapagos Islands. So I should get packing.

Check out the cool photos from the “middle of the world” at the following link.

Click on this link for photos from the middle of the world, or the Equator

PS Ecuadorian chocolate is to die for. Oh I am in heaven.