Tuesday 12th November 2013
The equator museums are in Ciudad Mitad del Mundo (Middle of the World city), an hour north of Quito by taxi. The official equator museum (Mitad del Mundo) was constructed over 3 years from 1979 to replace the smaller one that had been there since 1936. Since then technology has improved and revealed that the equator in fact lies 240 meters north of here, and so it is that another museum has appeared, which claims to be on the real equator, just up the road (Museo Inti-nan).
Mitad del Mundo is a funny place, mostly full of restaurants and gift shops. Dotted around the monument there are also a number of buildings containing exhibitions; we went to two of them.
The first was in the Insectarium which seemed oddly placed but was fascinating nevertheless. As well as the well-preserved insects on the walls they had a few live ones in glass boxes. There were an impressive collection of butterflies, cicadas, beetles and other giant insects there and by the end of it I was thoroughly crapping myself about visiting the Amazon.
The second exhibition was in the France building. It explained the history of Quito and Ecuador and why this place, more than any other, is so linked to the equator. It went through the history of construction of geographical maps and attempts to measure the dimensions of the Earth’s surface to aid in navigation. There were examples of instruments such as the astrolabe (used to measure the distance between a star and the horizon) and the sextant (used to measure angles between two directions using the sun, moon or stars as reference). In 1735, an expedition of French and Spanish scientists came to Ecuador with the aim of measuring the curvature of the meridian’s arc. The area around Quito was an ideal location to do this due to its altitude. The expedition concluded in 1743 and, as a consequence, the country was renamed from Quito (centre land) to Ecuador.
Museo Inti-nan is a 10 minute walk up a busy dusty road (if you know where you’re going – it’s not particularly well signposted). On arrival, we were given a tour where we were told about some of the (now illegal) practices of two indigenous Ecuadorian tribes which live near the coast with Peru. This included shrinking heads, drugging and burying of wives of dead chieftains in their tombs. We were also shown the collection of totem poles from all over the world and some preserved creatures from the Amazon. We were told a little about the history of Quito; it was founded over a thousand years ago as the centre of the Kingdom of Quito (Ecuador). As the name implies, the people there knew that it lied on the equator through their observance of shadows.
The latter part of the tour was for amusement. The guide went through a number of tricks, showing the effect of the Coriolis force using a sink, the balancing of an egg on a pin apparently being easier on the equator (both Ismael and I were able to do this and received certificates of graduation!) and the apparent weakening of muscles.
It was a pleasant day out and interestingly the two buses we took back to Quito were much more enjoyable than the taxi we had taken there, perhaps because we were able to escape the fumes from the traffic, which ironically the buses were almost entirely responsible for!
Ramblers Rumblings 