Mitad del mundo

July 2, 2017 in Ecuador ⋅ ☀️ 22 °C

Once I had decided not to join Brad, Tommy and Elliott to run from Chugchilan to Quilotoa I decided to go to Mitad del mundo - an monument on the equator to mark the middle of the world instead as a nice daytrip. I met Janice on the roof during breakfast and when she said she also wanted to go there we decided to venture out together. It was easy to get there by public transport. We took a city bus to the northern bus terminal and from there another bus to the entrance of the monument.
There were some informations about the french and spanish people who measured the middle of the world and we learned for example that the equator is actually 5km wide because the middle of the earth shifts gradually. But like most people we basically just went there to take stupid pictures crossing the equator line.
We had heard that the Inkas had actually already known this to be the middle of the earth and that their measurements were more correct. Apparently you could go to a second site to find this spot. We asked a security guide outside the monument and he laughed but told us to take a bus to Calacali, some town nearby. There we would find the original spot. We went to that town and found a miniature version of the monument in a park in the center of town. We walked around the park for a while measuring our position with our phones to find the actual equator line. We made it to 0°00'00.01 which should be pretty close. We got some snacks here and talked to this local guy who was wondering how we had come here - there was no other tourist to be seen.
I told the girl who did the walking tour in Quito the next day about our trip and she was also pretty confused how we ended up there. The point the Inkas had measured is just a few hundred meters from the big monument. The place we visited is where they moved the first monument build on the spot the french measured when the big one was build. It's still on the equator line but it's not more accurate than the other one. Anyways, we had fun and enjoyed our trip to Calacali.Read more