El Mitad del Mundo

This park and monument lie on the equator in Ecuador and allowed us to take some touristy pictures and explore their culture and science museum there. Some of the experiments were actually quite entertaining even though I think their target audience was a bit younger (5-6?). There are a lot of tours from the city for $50/person plus admission, but we decided to hop public busses and the whole trip came out to about $12 a person, including admission. We took a bus from the Santa Prisca stop in the center of town, up to the northernmost bus terminal (Ofelia), and then caught a bus from there headed to Mitad del Mundo. The whole trip was about 1.5 hours one way. Most of these busses are 25-75 cents, but Ecuadoreans have a funny way of pricing things differently for foreigners so it can always be a little more. If you don't speak Spanish well I would suggest a guided tour (I don't speak Spanish but Tobi does and he had to do everything for weeks (thanks Tobs)). Cute and fun but definitely geared towards tourists and not one of the best trips we did.

Note: We did a few other day trips in and around Quito but the above were our most photographed excursions. One trip that I would highly recommend is a visit to the Fundacion Guayasamin Museum, which commemorates the artist, sculptor and political activist Oswaldo Guayasamin in his former home.

Next post will be about Latacunga, EC, and will include our trip to and hike on the worlds largest active volcano, Cotopaxi.

P.S. We stayed at the Secret Garden Quito and highly recommend them for lodging.

- Erin