At last reaching the Equator

Thursday, August 31st

It was 8:30AM and everyone had left for work. Juan´s mom was nice enough to prepare breakfast for us which tasted like heaven. The plan for today was to explore the capital of Ecuador: Quito, as well as to go out an party at night. So without further to do we got out onto the streets and decided to take the bus towards the Mitad del Mundo monument. After walking around for a while we asked around and it turns out that the mentioned bus does not pass by this area anymore. I guess we will have to take the taxi.

The monument is quite far north from the city so the ride took about 15 or 20 minutes. At arrival, we paid the entrance fee together with a whole bunch of other tourists and got into the complex of the Middle of the World City. The significance of this monument is that his is the place where French and Spanish technicians in the 1800 determined the equator passed. In fact, this area has a painted line that divides the globe into two pieces: The northern and the southern hemisphere. I was incredibly excited since we had cross the tropic of Cancer about 7 weeks back and now we are crossing another geographical mark. Here, given the irregularly spherical shape of the earth, gravity is weaker than in other areas of the world so you weigh about 1 kg less!! Yuhhooo!! So after having seen other oddities of being in the center of the earth and taking tons of pictures we decided to go next door, about 50 mts north on the highway, to a very low end museum called Inti Ñan. The entrance there was steep at $3 per person. We had already turned around when we made up our minds about going it. The thing is that they promise to prove to us that the water flushes one way on the northern hemisphere and the opposite on the southern.

After our guide told us about the natives of this area in English, he took us to do some experiments. All of the experiments were highly suspect and marginal in conclusive power. We saw how the water flowed in to directions depending on whether he placed the sink on the northern or the southern hemisphere. They also have their own equatorial line because, according to this museum, the original was measured with inaccurate tools and theirs was measured with GPS :) After the whole tour, Alexey and I sneaked back to the sink and tried to duplicate the amazing results. We cannot say certainly if the water really flowed in two different directions. However, we do think that water seems to go straight down the drain, without going either clockwise or counterclockwise which makes sense. A result of this, is that the water goes one direction or the other with the slightest twist or help. Basically it is in a state of metastability which our guide took advantage of by perhaps twisting the plug at the bottom of the sink in a specific direction when taking it off. In either case, the visit was enlightening and we learned about the sun and telling time with it.

We got out to the highway and flagged a bus that took us to the city center. After about 25 to 30 minutes we got off at the cross road where we took a free shuttle to the new funicular service of Quito. The base of the funicular is full with restaurant and any other tourist service you need. There is even a theme park there! We bought the regular tickets for $4 and not the express ones for $7. Now, we were waiting in the long queue until the attendent needed 2 people to fill the latest gondola so we jumped to the opportunity and saved at least 20 minutes of waiting. The ride was incredible because it took us to about 3800 mts above sea level. Once there the view was awesome! You could see the city of Quito, the Cotopaxi and Illinizas snowed covered top volcanoes and other major peaks as well. This was a cold paramus environment. We sat down to eat some empanadas and sausage at the top. There is also a little trail were one can go up to 4100 mts in no time. We did this and after much effort (lack of oxigen really gets you tired fast!) we were overseeing the wonderful Andes mountains to the west.

It was now a bit late so we decided to get going. Our next stop was to go visit the PaloSanto Solutions´ office in Quito (this is my new employer). We took a taxi and were there shortly after. We talked to Luis, Rafael and Francisco who work at the office there about work, then they told us to be careful outside and we said good bye. We took another cab and reached the city center to explore. This is the colonial part of the city where we had been yesterday for a little while. This time, we visited the Plaza Grande, the Iglesia de La Compania, Palacio de Carondelet, Plaza and Iglesia de San Francisco and walked around the narrow streets of the old colonial town. It was pretty cool. Now it was time to head back to meet our friend Juan back at home.

We had to walk and wait quite a bit to get a taxi in this busy hour of the day. Arriving back to the apartment we waited a bit for Juan who got back from work. We got ready quickly and relaxed watching some TV. I called our friends Eva and Ana whom we had met in Panama and now are in Ecuador. They are Spanish and I wanted to see if they wanted to come out in Quito with us. Eva tells me that they stole her bag in a bus and now has no money nor passport so she won´t be able to hang out with us tonight. Perhaps tomorrow.

So the three of us were ready once again to hit the town. First, we need to eat and we did so at this burrito place. Not sure what the name was but the burritos were excellent! We each ate two burrito combo meals! We were stuffed and noticed that the fog was coming in. On the streets you could see the clouds coming down just like in San Francisco, California. However, it was much colder here. Across the street there was a Casino which we decided to visit just for curiosity. Once in, we were tempted to gamble a bit. We settled for a safe and innocent bet. We would only spend $10 between all of us. So we went to the roulette thinking we would bet just a few hands at the minimun bet of $1. I attempted to place a $3 bet on black since 80% of the past 15 numbers had been red. The last number had been a zero! yack! The lady tells us that the minumum for a color bet is $10 so we have no other choice than to put all our money on black to save our dignity and still look cool in front of the young good looking ladies at the table. The roulette goes and guess what came out? ZERO AGAIN!!!! This is unbelievable! two zeros back to back! Perhaps it is not so coincidental and they pressed a button that triggered an electromagnet and stole our money. This is not so far fetch from the truth since earlier we had seen the dealer pulling a Four of a Kind with Kings at the poker table! But oh well, we say good bye and walk out promising to come back and win next time.

We get back to the Mariscal area where we were yesterday. went into a bar but walked out rather quickly after hearing the life music which was horrendous to say the least. By a little plaza we noticed the same concert as yesterday and about 80 policemen nearby. We thought that something had happened but no, it was just the end of the concert which we missed completely. We sat at an outside bar next to four girls which refused to talk to us for long. We had a few drinks and moved on to another place. This place was really cool! At the beginning we thought about leaving right away but stayed after hearing a cool song. Soon after the DJ went nuts, changing from hiphop to rap to top to salsa to eighties to reggaeton, etc.. everything was a hit and people went dancing like crazy. We kept ordering drink after drink. We met our waitress Eny who was pretty cute. She took Alexey out dancing but he claims he messed it up by asking ¨Quieres trabajar?¨ which could be translated as ¨Do you want to work?¨ or ¨Do you want a job?¨. Alexey came back to our table and it was Juan´s turn to try. He took the waitress dancing for a little while without any change in luck. However, we had a great time and she remained our friend.

We got out of the place while there was a hiatus of great music. We decided it was time to go back since Juan has to work tomorrow. At home, we cooked some humitas in the microwave, ate them and hydrated ourselves so as to not be hangover tomorrow. Tonight was cool but don´t know what it is store for us tomorrow. We´ll see.. so close to our destination!!!