Day 2 (17 Aug) : La Mitad del Mundo

Obviously the reason this country is called Ecuador is because it is crossed by the Equator. 

So today we visited "La Mitad del Mundo", litterally meaning "The Half of the World". We took the local bus and 40 cents and ... 2hrs later we arrived. 

There is a monument, a few museums and fun experiments to explain what the implications of being right on the equator are. 

The Coriolis effect is null. In an (Ecuadorian) nutshell, cyclones and whirlpools swirl clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere and counter clockwise in the Northen Hemisphere. Here there are no rotation at all.

As everyone knows :-) one weighs less at the equator than anywhere else in the world ; up to 4kg less than at the poles as a matter of fact. 

Check out this reading - that's the exact spot

That means no cyclones occur, ever ! So no missing school for 2 days and eating home made "chapaties" while watching re-runs of James Bond on telly in a comfy sofa ... quite sad really. 

Roxana showing off her certificate for tilting an egg on a nail  head

And oh yeah, tilting an object to equilibrium is much less difficult. 

Anyway we had a great day out and a bit of a funny experience riding the bus back : Basically we did not realise that the bus never stops ! All it does is drive from point A to point B back and forth - so if you don't know when to get off, you stay on it till you start to recognise buildings you've passed by on the way out ... 

We lost 1h30 because of that which made us arrive back in Quito after dusk ... a little testing but no harm done in the end.