Where We Be
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| We paid our $2 entry fee and walked up to the 30-meter-high Mitad del Mundo monument |
| Mitad del Mundo, Ecuador |
| We met Edgar, the owner and manager of the restaurant, on our Galapagos cruise. He invited us to join him for a meal if we ever made it to Mitad del Mundo -- but we had no idea just how lovely the restaurant would be! |
| We ate the best empanadas of our lives here, and the traditional locro soup was delicious too |
| This is the nicest restaurant we visited in Ecuador. It has a gorgeous acacia tree trained to provide a leafy “ceiling” in the garden dining area. |
| We lucked out and got a sunny last day in Ecuador |
| We said hi to the "tourist llamas" |
| And we celebrated all those zeros |
| We left the monument site -- which is like a little town unto itself -- and headed to Cochabamba Restaurant about a hundred yards outside the entrance |
Our last stop before heading home was Mitad
del Mundo, which means "Middle of the World."
It marks where the equator passes through
Ecuador at latitude 000. Original calculations
performed in 1743 showed the equator line
here, although more recent GPS data puts it 240
meters north of the monument. In any case, it's
safe to say you're pretty darned close to the
equator when you visit this monument, and it's
the obvious place to celebrate that fact. We felt
we couldn’t leave Ecuador – a country named
for the equator, after all – without paying tribute
to this tourist mecca.
It's surprisingly easy to forget you're on the
equator when you visit Ecuador because so
many cities are situated along the mountainous
spine of the country and have a temperate
climate as a result. It's only when you dip down
to the coast or visit the Amazon Basin that you
rediscover the equatorial heat.
del Mundo, which means "Middle of the World."
It marks where the equator passes through
Ecuador at latitude 000. Original calculations
performed in 1743 showed the equator line
here, although more recent GPS data puts it 240
meters north of the monument. In any case, it's
safe to say you're pretty darned close to the
equator when you visit this monument, and it's
the obvious place to celebrate that fact. We felt
we couldn’t leave Ecuador – a country named
for the equator, after all – without paying tribute
to this tourist mecca.
It's surprisingly easy to forget you're on the
equator when you visit Ecuador because so
many cities are situated along the mountainous
spine of the country and have a temperate
climate as a result. It's only when you dip down
to the coast or visit the Amazon Basin that you
rediscover the equatorial heat.