Walking the Equator

PHIL:

Day 87/11 May

Before checking in for the Jan Jose flight (which to our dismay seems now to route via Guayaquil), we take a taxi to the site of the ‘official’ Equator, which passes through Ecuador – this country shares this distinction with only about ten others worldwide. There is an impressive column topped by a globe (which you can ascend by lift) and a line on the ground similar to that at Greenwich. The rest is a rather Disney-fied park where the French seem to have asserted their claim to have ‘invented’ the Equator (probably because the English established the Prime Meridian).

La Mitad del Mundo

Much more stimulating is the ‘alternative’ Equatorial position, some 200m north, where an enthusiastic group of young Ecuadorians has established what they believe to be the correct alignment as discovered by the indigenous people before the Europeans came. There are scraps of evidence, some more convincing than others, to do with ‘force lines’ and gravity. Water flows down a plughole directly on the line itself, clockwise on the southern side, anti-clockwise to the north. Eggs balance perfectly on nails on the line – better, apparently, than in northern or southern hemispheres. The main proof claimed, GPS co-ordinates, are not demonstrated. There are also shrunken heads from the Amazon and various Andean fertility symbols, so the mixture of fact and fiction is blurred.

Phil walking the magic equator line

Despite the diversion via Guayaquil we are in San Jose by 6 and trying to arrange a hotel for the night and a car for the morning. A helpful Avis desk clerk suggests a B&B ‘5 minutes’ from the airport rather than the nearby chain hotels. We suspect his aunt runs the suggested hostelry , especially as the promised ‘5 minutes’ is nearer 15 , but it turns out to be quite acceptable and less than half the price of alternatives. He also took us to a bank offering 10% better exchange rate for the local currency, the Colon, so we conclude he was just doing his job with extra flair.

Allie’s supply of effective sleeping pills has run out at last, so the night is more than usually disturbed.

ALLIE:

We decided to use the morning to drive out to the famous Equator line ‘La Mitad del Mundo’. In 1736 the first Geodesic Mission arrived in Ecuador in order to measure an arch of meridian to prove the shape of the earth. A few years later the Academy of Science in Paris sent General Charles Perrier to verify earlier results and to compete with the Spanish. Still they didn’t get it quite right: the Indians claim that the real line is about 200 meters west of the ‘official line’.

Standing on the equator line

I was here already 12 years ago. Alas it has changed to being a commercial tourist trap. You are charged three different entrance fees and all you get is a variety of souvenir shops, a view from the 10meter tall tower and a walk through a little museum displaying the different indigenous groups in Ecuador.

But we take the obligatory shots standing on the line at 00.00.00 degrees and that’s perhaps worth the money.

But much more interesting we find is actually the small Indian Inti-Nan Solar Museum. This is the place where the Indians believe to be the Middle of the Earth.

We are shown a couple of interesting experiments that allegedly prove that this is the correct Equator and that the French team with all their technologies ware actually wrong.

Allie testing the 'egg-trick'

And indeed it’s quite surprising that we can suddenly balance a raw egg on its top, that you can’t keep balance walking on a straight line and that you are less strong when standing right on the centre line then if you were standing 2 meters to either side. Whether all of this was shamanistic suggestion or indeed true – we couldn’t tell but it was certainly more interesting then the other expensive museum.

Interesting Indian curiosities

Around noon our taxi takes us back to the airport where it’s a bit of a long wait. But at least we can do our work through emails and internet. LACSA (the national carrier of Costa Rica) takes us via Guayaquil across the Pacific to San José

Guayaquil is near the coast and by now the largest city in Ecuador with nearly 3 million people. The brand new airport is a clear demonstration that the commercial and economic power is here rather then in the capital Quito.

I remember me sitting out in the heat on the tarmac many years ago on this nightmare trip waiting for our military captains to fly us back to Quito. That wouldn’t happen here anymore…

The world as seen from Ecuador

We arrive after a two hours flight at the International Airport in Costa Rica and are faced with the decision which Airport Hotel to take. Avis solves the problem for us, the guy recommends a little B&B nearby called the Hotel La Riviera and we are promised to be taken there for free. The Hotel is of course not 5minutes from the Airport but rather 15minutes but it is clean and quite cheap compared to the other big Hotels. And the best: it has a decent swimming pool! The evening is saved, for me with the pool, for Phil with the bar.