La Mitad del Mundo

Kissing from two seperate hemispheres...

Yes, We have been to the middle of the world! Ecuador´s biggest claim to fame (and its name) is its location right on the equator. La Mitad del Mundo is the place where Charles-Marie de La Condamine made the measurements in 1736 showing that this was indeed the equatorial line. In the center of La Mitad del Mundo stands a 30m-high stone trapezoidal monument topped by a brass globe. There are all kinds of touristy gift shops and such.
There is also a different museum next door where they say is the true equatorial line. With G.P.S they have determined that 250meters from this huge monument an tourist attraction is the true line. Well, we paid to see them both! We did not want to be left out of the loop, or should I say, left off the line!

Jesse holding the world with one hand...

Cass supporting the world and maintaining a graceful pose...

together, as one, in harmoney with trapezoidal monument...

This is also the place where we got our first dose of FOOD POISONING! Yep, we were hungry and needed to eat. We did not want to spend too much money and were delighted to see that several of the places for lunch in this park were cheap. We have adapted a rule/guideline for choosing a location to eat... If we have a choice between several restaurants, we will not pick the one that is empty of patrons even if it looks like it might be better. We have learned that there can be a lot of wisdom in choosing the one with people in it eating their food. So we chose the restaurant that had a lot of people (natives as well) eating at it (or at least compared to the other places). Due to this new experience we have added another rule/guideline: NEVER pay under $2 for a hamburger, fries and a coke! It just might kill you! We paid $1.80 for the above and Cass is now making up for the cost of the meal by paying with pain. She has been sick... it must have been perhaps a raw patty, lettuce or the tons of warm mayo on the fries and burger. We even discussed if we should eat it when we received our delicacies. Hmmm.... next time we will be all the wiser.

We learned/saw some interesting things that we did not know about our Planet. Like it is easier to balance an egg on the head of a nail, the days have roughly the same length of daylight and night time hours (12hrs from +/- 6am to 6pm) and you actually weigh less on the equator. We did a fun demonstration which I was skeptical to at first. Just off the equatorail line we preformed a ¨resistance¨demonstration were our young woman tour guide tried to seperate two pinched fingers and lower our clasped fists from above our head. I´ll be honest, I rolled up my sleeves for the arms demonstration. I fealt like everyone needed to know why she was unable to lower my arms... :) (Just kidding, I did not really do that- just kind of) For the most part, our young aspiring tour guide was unsucesful until... the line... She had us line up on the equatorial line and then preformed the same demonstration. While she was still talking she meandered down the line seperating fingers with ease and lowering our arms with one hand. I fealt bad for the other guys before me so I let her lower mine also. Plus I did not want to strain myself too much. She caught me in the eyes with an apoligetic glance as to say it was not personal and that it had nothing to do with my ¨man-hood.¨ With one hand she pulled down on my resistant arms and gave the que to Cass that if she wanted to try she was welcome to do the same. Cass spared me the trauma. Thanks sweetie!

the equator and it´s line...

The trip to The Middle of the World was in all a great one. We got matching shirts that said, ¨Been there, Balanced that,¨ with a picture of an egg. No, we did not get a shirt, but I am sure I could market it there!

Make sure you answer the trivia question to the right...