This morning (or rather yesterday morning) I went to the Equator!  Which means Ive officially travelled 55 degrees of latitude by bus and boat! Awesome.

The Equator at Ecuador is rather messy though.  THe main equator line (in the City of the Middle of the World) isnt actually the equator.  Turns out the french turned up heard it was the middle of the world and slapped up a monument without really thinking.  So the monument is actually 240m from the real equator.

So next to that there is the archeology museum.  Turns out the incas had calculated the equator perfectly, building some weird thing at the top of a mountain where the equator is, designating the positions of the sun in the equinoxes and solstices.  Their sun temples (later built into churches by those dastardly spanish) all go along the equator.  Yada yada, history stuff.

Then theres the real equator in a small museum which calculated it by GPS (although strangely the archeology museum said there isnt a proper sign at the real equator, maybe its some conspiracy.  Anyway, at that museum they do all the experiments with water and that, and they work so I guess it must really be at the equator (although Im way too confused to be sure).

Besides… on Saturday I took a bus up to Otavalo, 2 hours north of Quito.  So thats definitely in the northern hemisphere so I must have crossed the equator.  YEY