I'm trying to balance an egg on the head of a nail. I'm assured by the guide at the Mitad del Mundo museum that it's possible. When I stepped, up I was entirely determined to do it, but after twenty seconds of not getting close, I huffed and puffed and gave up.
Apparently, the hostel's English contingent and I are precisely on the equator. The museum includes some shrunken heads from a shrunken head tribe and some demonstrations of how the forces on either side of the equator are neutral down the middle - hence the egg.
It's all very novel, but we've been assured that neither of the two Mitad Del Mundo museums are accurately positioned on the equator, and that the demonstrations are all unrelated to the real equatorial line. The museum claims to have pinned itself on the equator using a military GPS, some fifteen years ago. Being a part-time sailor, I'm particularly smug with the knowledge that a fifteen year old military GPS would be lucky to pin the tail anywhere on a fifty-foot donkey. Nonetheless, everyone is having a great time taking photos of each other straddling an arbitrary line on the ground. Sometimes I'm glad I lost that camera.
No comments:
Post a Comment