Mitad del Mundo

Back in the early 1700s, French explorer Charles Marie de La Condamine spent years tracking down what he was sure was the precise location of the equator, focusing his efforts just north of Quito.  Several decades later, a team of French scientists came down to verify his work, giving Chuck’s established line the official French seal of approval.  A 30-foot tall monument was placed over the imaginary spot to commemorate its earth-splitting greatness, and topped with an iron globe for good measure.  By 1980, the small obelisk was deemed too insignificant for one of the modern world’s most significant geological “guesstimates,” and a massive tower — this time topped with a five-ton globe — was erected, now with a long, white line stretching outwards from it, allowing tourists for decades to straddle two hemispheres as photogenically as possible.

Unfortunately, modern GPS equipment has shown all those tourists and Frenchmen to be just about 240 meters off the mark.  A smaller, less ostentatious museum was added several years ago on the more precise spot, right next door to the “official” one, leading to this semi-regular tourist conversation:

“I’m went to Mitad del Mundo (the middle of the world) today!”

“Oh,” snidely, “Did you go to the right one?”

Both sites are impressive in their own right and cost between two and three dollars to get into.  The “real” one, as in “the one established by the government several decades ago,” has multiple museums that have little to do with the equator inside, a planetarium, insect zoo and variety of fairly sterile looking restaurants where ordering a rodent/pet like guinea pig might actually be hygienically feasible.  The “real” one, as in “the big painted line representing the equator that is actually on the equator” offers a freakshow-like museum with shrunken heads, mummified snakes and jarred candiru, along with various “scientific” tricks that I’ve been assured by multiple people could not possibly have been real.

The German non-couple I hit Otavalo with, Arlem and Simone, came along again on this venture, as well as Wai (pronounced “why?”), a new friend from the hostel.  Freshly in love with a Colombian she’d just met in Peru, Wai had a day to figure out whether to stick with her initial plan of heading north to a country full of Colombians or return south to just one of them, and Mitad offered a perfect diversion.  Mass transit took us about an hour and a half to get there.  We stood for most of the time, but it barely even seemed as though  we covered gas money with the forty cents spent on the trip.

Getting down to "Above the Waves"

The obelisk, a monument to inaccuracy, beckons immediately as we jump off the bus.  Sundays bring live music and other performances, which in turn bring a larger percentage of locals to blend in with the sea of camera-happy tourists.  The sky’s opened up at some point in the afternoon daily since I’ve arrived, leaving us racing not only dusk but the oddly reliable late day deluge as well.  The “fun with science” aspect of the newer museum is most compelling to all of us, but as only a single sign along what looks to be a small service road announces its existence, we get sucked instead into the massive spectacle of the official park.

Live music — not salsa for a change, so much as a more traditional, folky Latin sound — blasts out from somewhere between the cluster of overpriced restaurants and souvenir stands we’re standing by and the central monument consistently visible in the background.  A large crowd’s gathered around a cluster of modestly dressed women performing a traditional dance number; eight of them in vividly colored dresses whirl around in a loosely choreographed circle of rhythmic motions.  Small children run through the crowd collecting money, though it’s uncertain if they’re related to the act or profiting off the assumed good will of the freshly entertained.  The rapt audience stays intensely focused on the display, even after the dancers leave the stage, replaced by a male/female pair that are both less colorful and less interesting to watch.

It's not accurate, but the sign still makes for a good photo-op

An orange, mock equatorial line slices through the monument and runs down a thick walkway with an enormous, floral “S” and “N” to growing to either side of it, representing half of the cardinal directions.  The statues, plaques and landscaping celebrate the equator so artfully, it’s almost easy to forget they built the place over the wrong one.  We take turns being tourists and straddling imaginary hemispheres before heading up to the only restaurant with cuy on the menu for lunch.

An exotic dish in few places in the States, guinea pigs were once reserved for religious figures and ceremonial meals, though regular folks got the fever for the flavor of the pigs down here some time around the 1960s and they’ve been standard fare in certain Andean regions throughout Peru, Ecuador and Colombia ever since.  Personally, I’ve never much had a craving for any type of rodent, either as a pet or as lunch, but the critters are high in protein, low in fat, and supposedly are no worse than rabbit.  Cuy’s extremely overpriced down here — easily the cost of about seven typical almuerzos — and the grimacing presentation is a bit of an appetite killer.  Sometimes pictures tell the story a little better, though:

The poor bastard comes out split down the middle — paws, claws, fangs, tail and all.  I’ve been told the full bodied presentation stems from a desire on the part of the restaurants to assure their patrons they’re not being served rat or some other, less impressive rodent.  It’s mildly disconcerting.

But clearly not too disconcerting…

The epic “After” picture.  The stack of bones might imply that I got more than five normal sized bites of meat off of the little, but I assure you that I did not.

chicha, of the hopefully spit-less variety

Equally traditional in these parts is chicha, the milky yellow beverage I ordered to go with my vermin.  Mildly fermented — about 1-3% alcohol, tops — this maize-based drink has been made for hundreds of years by forming balls of starchy paste in the mouth, with the preparer’s saliva playing an active role in the drink-making process.  Luckily, this is only still done (supposedly) deep in remote areas of the countryside, though the sneering guinea pig on my plate distracted me from actively asking about it.  The alcohol’s too weak to affect me, but too strong to make me forget I’m gulping down fermented corn.  In Chone, I had a special blend (now, with peanuts!) and it seems to have spoiled me from any other variations of the sour drink.

As we eat, the music outside changes, gets louder.  A sassy female voice is barking something into a microphone in an attempt to get the crowd riled up, and it seems to be working.  Traditional garb and music have been put away in exchange for an act that seems to be Latin America’s take on the Spice Girls, only built upon the premise that the Spice Girls weren’t nearly slutty enough for their fans.  Five women parade across the stage in skimpy outfits while a crowd of children and their parents look on.  None of the adults seem particularly bothered by the overtly sexual display, though, so I’m certainly not going to be.

Las chicas de especia. And a random guy on stilts.

For such a large complex, the park doesn’t have much to offer, and none of us are terribly thrilled to drop any more cash on additional mini-museums after already paying to get in.  The unimpressive planetarium’s three more dollars, and despite the presence of constellations unavailable in the northern hemisphere my newfound cheapness trumps any mild curiosity I might have about the southern cross.  The Museum of Indigenous People?  Three more dollars unspent.  There’s an insect zoo that’s free, though about the size of an average living room.  By the time we’re shopping for overpriced postcards, it’s clear we’ve gotten the gist of the place and start digging into our meager Spanish skills to ask around about the alternate park.

Straddling the "true" equator

Following a dirt road that looks more like a hidden back entrance, we make our way to the Intiñan Solar Museum.  It’s another three bucks for entry, but a far more interactive experience, complete with an English speaking guide to help us navigate our way through both a history of the pre-Spanish peoples and the various equatorial experiments therein.  Much has been made about the veracity of the display, but the tests all seem fairly straight-forward.

A plastic bin on legs with a bucket below it has a fifty cent piece sized hole cut into the middle and water is poured into it and allowed to drain.  To ease the viewing a bit, broken leaf bits are dropped in to illustrate the flow of drainage into the bucket.  When placed over their version of the equator, marked in white stone along the otherwise dark pavement, the water drops through into the bucket below with no spiraling effect.  Ten feet in one direction has the leaf bits flow clockwise, while ten feet in the opposite direction brings a counter-clockwise spinning.  There seems to be much doubt over this experiment, though the plastic bin seemed no different from your standard Home Depot variety and the hole looked cut in by hand with no attachments to affect the drainage in any way.

The first test of equatorial magic

We’re told by the guide to interlock our fingers and hold our arms straight and aloft, while another friend attempts to pull the arms down.  Anywhere but the equator, this requires a degree of force on the part of the puller, but standing on it, the arms are easily brought down with mild effort.  Yet another test involves tightly pressing the index finger and thumb together in an “A-OK” sign while a friend uses the same two fingers from inside the makeshift circle to break the link.  Away from the equator it proves impossible, yet standing again on the line, the circle is broken effortlessly.  I’m not denying that the tests might be more a testament to the power of suggestion than to any kind of “equatorial magic,” but we repeated every test giddily, and the marked change in resistance appeared to not be any kind of tomfoolery.

Note the intense concentration...

And finally, the egg trick: Changes in gravity being what they are (or something), the standard egg becomes greatly more simple to balance on its end.  The challenge here is built around a single nail, its flat end protruding upwards at a perfect ninety degrees from a large egg-themed statue.  Balance it right and receive an official diploma proclaiming your proud, egg-balancing mastery to an uncaring world.  Fake or not, it’s the most enjoyable test as nimble fingers gently wrap around the egg with subtle shifts in weight, like Indiana Jones and the golden statue from the first scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark.  I get my diploma, though it is, as of yet, unframed.

The rest of the presentation focuses on some of the creepier elements of the Amazon.  I lightly stroke the hair of a shrunken head as the process is painstakingly explained to us (remove all bone and brain, treat with secret family recipe for skin shrinkage and keep for posterity).  There really is no better way to take someone’s soul and power, apparently, and the procedure would be used at times on respected friends as well as revered enemies.  Another room stores bizarre jungle creatures — including, yes, the candiru – either mummified or stored in glass jars of formaldehyde.  A quick turn for everyone with a blowgun, and we end up in the ceremonial gift shop filled with traditional clothings and noisemakers, now playfully adorned in ways any shaman would approve of with Spongebob Squarepants.

One of the most sacred indigenous mythological figures

The colorful, face-covering hat I tried on in Otavalo adorns a quiet older man that hopefully works for the park.  He’s followed us for some time and the end of the tour causes him to spontaneously break out in song and start dancing around in a circle.  The possibility is always there that he’s a random native and not an employee at all, inspired by the head-shrinking display and looking to build up his collection.  But the likelihood of that is small enough that I follow his lead and start dancing along with him.  Others join in, turning his slow, deep chant into an impressive display of coordination-less gringos, but he nods to me at the end of the song and my head is spared.

Getting down

Like clockwork, the rain slowly begins to build in intensity and along with the setting sun, the nearly empty outdoor museum takes on an oddly eerie quality.  The buses will be coming with less frequency soon, and we take our leave.   Signs along the way back to the bus stop advertise other museums, and a nearby dormant volcano also looks to be a point of interest, but the day’s been long and full, and Quito’s regular display of evening rain is masterful at putting a damper on both moods and tourism.  The remains of the cuy are scampering around listlessly in my stomach, and I begin to wish I’d attempted to check out the effects of the equator on my excretory system, though I manage to keep everything safely inside for the long bus ride until our return to the hostel.

But just barely.

Twilight at the Inti-nan Solar Museum