Mitad del Mundo

To find the Earth’s equator is now pretty easy. You stand around where you think it is with your handy GPS and the gadget tells you where to go and when you’ve arrived. Back when the equator was first mapped, it was the 1700s, and no one thought to bring along their GPS.

The story of the equator (well, equators, but we’ll get to that in a minute) in Ecuador starts in the 1700s when the first geodesic expedition took place, the French Geodesic Mission, whose goal was to find and mark the equator. The equator passes through 14 countries. The ones on major land masses were sort of uninviting, or at least seemed like a hassle to the French (present day Uganda, Somalia, places like that). So they turned to South America, and specifically it seemed like a nice Spanish controlled territory (now Ecuador) was traveler friendly, a nice colonial city, Quito, was already built nearby. So they asked the King of Spain if it was cool for them to go equator hunting and he said sure, provided you take a long these two Spanish scientists to share in the glory. So they all set off in 1735.

They got to Quito, met up with an Ecuadorian scientist, and started measuring the curvature of the Earth around Quito. They stood on tall hills (there are many around Quito), they walked around a lot, they measured. Through some math that I cannot admit I fully understand, they came up with the location of the equator. And that spot is called Mitad del Mundo (Middle of the World in Spanish).

Kelly & Jacob on the equator

Ecuador’s Equator #1: French

Ecuador eventually became independent of Spain, and decided to commemorate the expedition and the equator, which they named their country after (yep, Ecuador is Spanish for equator), by erecting a monument. There’s a long walk up to the monument, the path flanked by big heads of all the scientists on the expedition.

The path culminates with a view of a stone building topped by a representation of the Earth (on its side for optimal equator viewing). Inside the stone building is an Ethnographic Museum, which houses some very worthwhile exhibits on the various cultures and peoples of Ecuador, both indigenous and not.

If you trek out to the Mitad del Mundo, I highly recommend a visit to the museum. And, of course, there’s a big line painted on the ground to represent the equator complete with compass markings.

The monument is great, there’s just one problem with it, its not actually on the equator. The French guys were good at math, but not perfect, they came in a mere 250 meters off.

Ecuador’s Equator #2: Actually at 0°0′0″ Lat.

Kelly & Jacob at actual equator

Located on the actual equator is the Inti Nan museum. Besides sitting atop the actual GPS calculated equator, the museum has hands on exhibits about indigenous Ecuadorian life (houses, food, stuff like that). The exhibits were interesting, but more interesting are the experiments you can participate in on the equator.

Try to walk the equator line straight with your eyes closed, its impossible, you feel like you’re falling. You can balance an egg on the head of a nail, gravity is straight down, so it becomes a much easier task. Watch the Coriolis effect in action as water spins down drains. All of it was fun in a sort of freaky and nerdy kind of way.

I highly recommend visiting at least one, if not both of the equators in Ecuador. I know it seems like a really touristy thing to do, but how often can you hop over a line and across a hemisphere?

– Kelly G

Following in the French Geodesic Mission’s footsteps and traveling to Ecuador? Browse Viator’s tours to Mitad del Mundo.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 11th, 2008 at 12:29 pm and is filed under Destinations, S. & Central America, Travel Inspiration, Traveler of the Week, Weird & Wonderful. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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