Mitad de Mundo

Here in Quito, I live in a HomeStay. From what I can tell, the main people that live in this house are Jenny, the owner, Pero, her husband that is about half her age, no lie, her granddaughter, aka the little devil, and her son’s girlfriend. Other than that, people come and go, like I have come and will, in time, leave as well. Another guy named Jim from the United States came the same day as I did, also did not know any Spanish and is taking lessons every day like me. So, naturally, we stick together.

This past Saturday we visited Mitad de Mundo, which translates to Middle of the World. We left fairly early, around 10 am and walked to the bus station. It took us about 90 minutes and two bus rides, culminating to about 40 cents total. Along the way, some things to take note of was how children would start doing backflips and handstands in the street during stoplights for money, the blind man that sang and whistled a tune along with his boombox on both our bus rides, and the Afro-Ecuadorian family that looked like they were tying to get their very sick daughter to the hospital, throw-up bag in hand and all.

When we arrived we paid a minimal fee to enter a museum that was supposed to be where the Ecuador line passed through. It was OK at best. There were a lot of shops but most of them had largely the same thing. These consisted of souvenirs (like small crystal versions of the tower shown above), hand-woven quilts, clothes, a chess set, postcards, etc, etc, etc.The food was good and there were a lot of tourists. There isn’t much to say about the place. One thing that I thought was kind of cool was the little buildings that contained models of the different cities, but as you’ll see in my next post, that was obsolete to me by the next day.

As I said, we sat down and ate there and I am still amazed by how cheap things are in this country. I'll let the menu speak for itself. I ordered the pollo (chicken). And yes, American currency.

My new English speaking companion, Jim, said that his teacher had told him about another museum close by where the REAL Ecuador line was. Apparently the natives had gotten it right hundreds of years ago and then Europeans came and screwed it up, as always. The first museum we went to, the more popular one, was about 200m off the mark.

Btw, I know I look a lil rough in the face, but I thought I might as well let the beard grow for 10 weeks, see where it takes me. Demetric, I'm putting in a reservatin for the 16th of September!

The second museum was the more interesting of the two by far! This was evident almost immediately upon entering. It had less of a tourist look to it and more like it was a genuine historic place that was being preserved.

We paid about 3 dollars for a tour and were put into a group with Jim, me, and three other tourists, 2 of them from Australia and one from Europe. The tour began in a house that was made by one of the many indigenous tribes in Ecuador. They came to the museum about a year and a half ago to build it. We learned that they never really wear clothes to represent their freedom.

Next we moved on to a replica of a tribe’s burial site, where an interesting story was told. Here, the dead are placed in the fetal position, as they believe that since we come into this world like that, we should enter the next life the same, and then encased in large vases. The interesting part is that when the chief of the tribe dies, his whole family (wife, children, etc) are drugged with a juice from a type of cactus that makes them go into this deep sleep. They are all then buried alive with the chief and they die of suffocation. It is not a sacrifice but considered an honor. The tour-guide joked that the moral of the story is don’t marry the Chief! I found it most interesting that the same cactus could be found growing just a few feet away at the museum.


On to things involving the sun! One thing that we heard a lot was that indigenous peoples of Ecuador would worship the sun a lot and try to harness its energies. During the tour we were taken to a spot that was calculated to be on the very Equator line itself, and that line was marked off in red. Along the line we found many instruments to tell time by catching the shadow of the sun. One of the instruments in particular, the guide said, was more accurate that our watches. I forget which days, but two days out of the year (equinox) the sun will be directly overhead at noon time and for a minute or two no shadows would be cast. A particular tribe would make a huge well in the ground and have someone stand at the bottom, his arms spread wide and thumbs up, at noon on equinox to fully "gather the energy of the sun." Another thing I learned, but what I already knew from my few days here but didn't quite process it into a thought yet, was that the sun rises and sets at 6 am and 6 pm everyday, all year around.


We then conducted a few experiments to prove that we were really on the equator. The first was the water trick. The guide (and the internet) says that this trick is helped out a little but I didn't see where the human interference came in. What he did was take a portable sink that was filled with water and place a bucket under the drain (plugged) to catch it. He would then put three leaves on the surface of the water and take out the plug, releasing the water into the bucket. On the equator line, the water went straight down without spiraling. He repeated this experiment just ten feet north and south of the equator line and (I forget which corresponds to which direction) the water spiraled clockwise or counter-clockwise on either side. I was impressed.

The second experiment was a strength one and I think it was mostly psychological. What the guide had us do was stand about 10 feet away from the equator line and instruct us to make our finger and thumb into an 'O' and try to keep them together while he pulled them apart. It was supposed to be easier for him to do pull our fingers apart at the equator because of something or other about centrifugal force. I noticed a difference, but again, I think that is probably psychological. Then we balanced an egg on a nail, which is supposed to be much easier at the equator because of the balance of forces there. Our whole group did it successfully and we each received a certificate for it. And they were serious abut it too, because I remember at the end of the tour he was trying to make sure he wasn't giving a certificate to someone who hadn't completed the heroic task.


The next part took us to a house that had been there for about 130 years. It was made of wood and leaves. It was made waterproof by the smoke, produced from cooking on the fireplace inside, melding to the leaves. It was decorated with trophy animal heads, had an interesting looking chair made from the stump of a tree, pots and pans, etc. Since the area was high-elevation, it would get cold at night so the family that lived there would, get this, keep many many live guinea pigs in their house to supply body heat! And there was actually a little guinea pig den there when we went.

The tour ended at a hut that had a vast collection of stuffed animals and artifacts. There was a large dead anaconda being preserved in a tank and it was said that it used to be the museum's pet a coupel years ago. Another dead pet put on display was a large tortoise from the Galapagos. There was a tarantula, other insects, smaller snakes, and that little devilish creature you hear about swimming up a man's pecker and then making it its home, having to be surgically removed. I had heard about that a lot in movies and stories, but had always wondered if it were real. It is in the last visible jar (the right) and you can see how big it gets! Hopefully none of these are in the San Miguel waters, as I have heard that I will need to bathe in the river once I get there.


In a little glass box, off to the side, was what looked like something I had only seen in cartoons, really. It was a little green object, about the size of a baseball, but it had eyes, a mouth, eyes and...was that hair? It was. A genuine shrunken head. Estimated age of victim: 13-14 years of age. Overhead they had two posters that explained the process in pictures. If you ever wanted to know how shrunken heads are made, look no further.

Step 1 - 3: Remove the head! Step 4: Remove the excess stuff, meaning the skull and brains, leaving only the cartilage in the nose. Step 5: Um...travel with the head? Step 6: This is how they actual shrink it. They boil it in their secret recipe and then, I guess, let it sit out to dry.

Step 7: Sew up the eyes. Step 8: Sew up the mouth. Step 9: Add rocks to make it keep its form. Steps 10-12: Enjoy. The reason for shrunken heads is for a trophy. In war when someone is killed, sometimes the killer will take the head and make it into a shrunken head trophy. I also think they believe this traps the soul. The 14 year old they had on display was old enough to fight and, thus, old enough to die. They shrink monkey heads these days, just to keep up with the tradition.

On the way backhome, Jim and I all of a sudden noticed that a lot of people were getting off the bus but we didn't recognize the stop (we were waiting for the popular station where we would change buses). We thought maybe we should get off but we didn't know the surroundings, so we stayed on. Then things got really unfamiliar and Jim, with his handy dandy compass, said we were heading in the wrong direction. We decided to get off at a random spot and catch our bearings. We walked down a foreign street for about 2 minutes and then saw that we had stumbled on the street our homestay was on. We had gotten off only a few blocks away from our destination and that was with just one bus instead of the previously required two. Luck at its best!
BTW, me at the REAL Equator: