Monday 12th January 2026: Mitad del Mundo

 

Quito is a truly beautiful city and it's a pity we couldn' t stay a few more days as there's so much to see nearby.  However, unless we win the Premium Bonds and can spend all our time travelling, we have to get in as much of this country as we can.  The two main options for the day were: catch a cable car up Volcan Pichincha and admire the views or visit the Mitad del Mundo.  Given that the volcano is permanently shrouded in low cloud, the latter seemed the better option.  So we booked a tour there as public transport was complex.

The tour bus left from the Bulevar Naciones Unidas in the financial section of the town near Carolina Park.  The simplest way to get there was by underground train.   The Metro is relatively new to Quito, opening in December 2023 after a complex construction.

It runs north to south and there is only one stop in the old city in front of of San Fransisco Monastery.

It was a credit to the designer that the Metro station was subtly concealed and did not disturb the surrounding architecture.

Tickets for a one way journey was 45 cents.  (Have we said that Ecuador's currency is the US Dollar?)

Trains came frequently and were very busy.  There are signs showing you where the doors would be and people formed an orderly queue to get on.  The only problem was that they did not wait for other passengers to disembark before boarding.

We travelled 6 stops to Inaquito Station, and emerged near the tour departure point.

Our bus was a double decker with an open roof, that could be covered over.  We sat at the top.

The bus headed north to the equator at San Antonio de Pichincha, about 25 kilometres north of the city.

The driver must have wanted to be a Formula 1 driver, as he threw the bus round bends, weaved in and out of traffic, leaving is clinging on to the seats.  

One thing we have also noticed is that there is no lane discipline on the roads.  Drivers pick a lane and generally stay in it, no matter have slow they are.  Horn use is fairly common too.

The road to San Antonio was three laned most of the way.

Despite being a three lane main road there were quite brutal yellow speedbumps with people standing mid lane selling snacks and drinks.

There were plenty of street stalls on the way too.

One really unusual building we saw was the Memorial Necropoli. It is South America's first large vertical cemetery which can hold 11,500 urns. 

I couldn't get a good photo from the bus so I pulled this one from the internet.

Pichincha shrouded in cloud.  The size of the city is immense and still growing.  It sprawls across and up the side of two valleys, and is 70 km from north to south but only 4 km  wide.  About 1.7 million people live there.  On the outskirts, in particular, there are lots of half finished new builds.

Approaching the Mitad del Mundo we could see the twin cones of El Chivo and Pondoña, located within the Pululahua Geobotanical Reserve just north of Quito.  According to the guide, Pululahue is one of a few volcanic craters in the that is inhabited and has its own eco-system.  Given more time, we would have loved to have visited it.

Of course, Ecuador gets its name as it sits on the Equator and because the world is ovoid and not round, the equator in Ecuador is the further away from the centre of the earth - hence Mitad del Mundo.

The famous Mitad del Mundo is a huge pillar with a sphere atop it.  Ascertained to be on the Equator by French surveyors in 1736, the monument was built in between 1979 and 1982.

What is curious about the sight, is that about 200m metres away from the huge Monument is the Intiñan Solar Museum, which also claims that the equator runs through it.

Much less grand, it was a fun place, with plenty of opportunity for photos and the guide amused us with some pseudo experiments showing the effect of the Coriolis, such as water draining in different directions either side of the Equator.

Pretty birds at the Museum.

Alpacas.

Diablo Humo

On the Equator.....allegedly

One of the "experiments" they do is balancing eggs on the end of a nail head.  This is purportedly easier at the equator due to the claim of a relative maximum in the magnetic field at the equator. However, scientists claim that attempts to balance eggs work just as well anywhere else on Earth, and are not influenced by magnetism or the Coriolis force

Kevin successfully balanced his egg and was awarded a certificate!

"Experiment" showing the Coriolis effect.

Our guide

While it all might have been a bit of hocus-pocus, it was certainly entertaining.

The tour concluded with a visit to a "typical" indigenous house complete with guinea pigs, a local delicacy.

And we finished with a a rather gruesome display of spiders and anacondas as well as a gory explanation of how shrunken heads were made with equally bloody illustrations.

Here's a shrunken human head (known locally as tsantsas) well as a shrunken sloth.  They were only illegalised in Ecuador in the 1930s.

After the fun of the museum, we went to the commercial Mitad del Mundo and took our photos in front of the monument.  We also had a cheeky craft beer.  

The place is very commercialised with lots of shops, restaurants and tourists eager to get their perfect Insta photos.

Interestingly, neither of the  two sites we visited are accurately on the Equator, which can move due to tectonic shift,s but the Intiñan Solar Museum is the closer.

It was then another bumpy ride back to Quito.  Near the drop off point we spotted a SuperMaxi - a hypermarket where we had been told sold vegan cheese, etc.  It did so rather than go out we bought some seitan cutlets to eat at home with chips and asparagus.  Let's say the Ecuadorian asparagus was delicious and the cutlets could have served a garden slabs.