Exploring the Quito Surroundings

With a visit to the market yesterday evening – we were set for breakfast this morning. Cherimoya, Guanabana (soursop) and Granadilla (passion fruit) made for a delicious fruit based breakfast. The inside of a Granadilla looks like something from the guts of an alien – with black seeds surrounded by some goopy stuff encased in a white sack encased in the entire orange outside of the fruit. Never trust looks when it comes to fruit – sometimes you can be fooled into thinking something ugly looking will not taste good. Not so with this fruit – when ripe – its a wonderful taste combination of both tangy, sweetness with a crunchy texture coming from the seeds (which are edible).

Heading up – high up – we grabbed the tram car at Teleferico, one of the world’s longest and highest tram cars. In about 15 minutes we were at 4100 meters. The trail leads from the tram high up into the mountains – I hiked above 4200 meters. I’ve had such bad altitude sickness at this elevation in the past, that it is a great feeling when I feel “normal” at these altitudes.

The Intiñan Solar Museum at La Miad del Mundo – or at the true equator as measured by GPS is well worth a visit and was one of the highlight of today’s activities. According to the experiments placed on the equatorial line here – water does go straight down on the true equator – we witnessed this in action. Moving the water and the drain to each side of the equator produced both clockwise and counterclockwise swirls depending on whether we were in the Northern or Southern Hemisphere!

Additional fun and educational equator exercises soon followed – balancing eggs perfectly on the head of a nail and attempting to walk along the equator blind folded with outstretched arms proved much more difficult than normal. Also strength exercises were fun – on the equator a weak person could easily push down a strong persons raised arms but to each side, the strong person easily prevailed.

I have seen a number of comments online that these tricks, while fun to experience are fake. So take it all with a grain of salt and know that if you visit this area – you are somewhere close to the exact equator but apparently the equator monument and the equator line at the Intiñan Solar Museum are not in fact true measurements of the equator’s exact location.