Any visit to Quito would not be complete without a quick trip to Mitad del Mundo – the Equator line. Mitad del Mundo, for those of you that don’t know, translates as ‘Half the world’ in Spanish.
Located 23 kilometers North of Quito, getting there is as simple as jumping in a cab and paying $25 for a round trip with a one hour wait, whilst you jump out for photos. We however spent the best part of five hours fannying around on public transport and paid about $1 each.
There’s not a whole lot to do there, except take photos like the one above of me – “one testicle in each hemisphere”. There are also a couple of tacky exhibitions, a planetarium and a big monument – shown behind me in the photo. What’s more, in one of the museums you reputedly get a prize if you balance an egg on a nail, and you can be thrilled by the sight of water flowing straight down a plug hole instead of it spinning clockwise or anti-clockwise (depending on whether you are in the Northern or Southern Hemisphere). Something, incidentally, that Wikipedia informed me was a load of rubbish when I checked afterwards. The Coriolis effect is far too weak for such displays.