Quito and Goodbye to South America.

So we finally arrived in Quito where my first trip officially ended. People started leaving pretty much straight away and it was sad to see them go. We had a couple of last meals together including a Mongolian BBQ and a Thai meal and needless to say quite a few drinks!

As I was in no rush to leave and had plenty of time to explore I took a trip to the Equator monument. It´s a bit strage as there are actually two Equator lines - one calculated by the French which a monument is built around, however this turned out to be wrong as there is another line 200m away which is the correct line calculated by GPS.

Here I am at the monumnet line:




And the GPS line:




The GPS line is inside a museum. There was lots of good stuff to try here including watching water spin down a sink plug hole in different directions depending on what side of the line the sink was on (right on the line it does not spin at all - WOW!!). There was even one point right on the line where you could balance an egg on a nail apparently this is impossible anywhere else - AMAZING!! Also you actually weigh less on the Equator.

See Martin below be quite literally amazed by the balancing egg.



The museum had some other good stuff to see including a shrunken head from one of the jungle tribes which was quite rough especially when they explain the shrinking process to you - apparently they do not use magic sprinkling powder as I had originally thought. I also got to try out a blowpipe and for you hat lovers I got to wear a head dress too.



I had another couple of days in Quito and did a bit of sightseeing aroung the old town and went up to the look out over the city which had amazing views but stupidly forgot to but a memory card back in my camera!!

It was nice to have a few days at the end of the trip to relax and catch up with all my e-mails and as you´ve probably noticed this blog.

So I finally got to leave Equador and flew up to Miami en route to Guatemala and my Central American tour.