Mitad del Mundo

Saturday 27th February 1988

Jackie set off for the “Mitad del Mundo” on his bike and I went off to find a bus to the same destination, which was the line where the equator crosses Ecuador 23 kilometres north of Quito.

On the way I stopped by at the main Post Office to dispatch a card. Most of the kiosks were closed but I found one which sold stamps. While waiting in the queue I noticed that the old lady only had one Sucres stamps. The woman in front of me had a letter to America and I watched with amazement as the stall owner covered every inch of space of both sides with about fifty overlapping stamps.

I decided to try another place as there was no way that she was going to get forty stamps on the available space on my postcard. Luckily another window had ten Sucres stamps. I then followed Calle Chile up to the market area and the roundabout where it met Cuenca.

I spotted a “Mitad del Mundo” bus edging through the crowd and managed to jump on and get a good seat behind the driver just before the hordes crammed aboard. We then went north through a long tunnel and out along the Pan American Highway.

The bus stopped and started to allow passengers to get off or more to cram on. I was the only gringo on the bus. After just over an hour, I spotted the tall column with the globe on top. The entrance was via a row of columns with busts of famous Ecuadorians.

The Ciudad Mitad del Mundo (Spanish: [La mitad del mundo], Middle of the World City) is a tract of land owned by the prefecture of the province of Pichincha, Ecuador. It is located at San Antonio parish of the canton of Quito, 26 km (16 miles) north of the centre of Quito.

The grounds contain the Monument to the Equator, which highlights the exact location of the Equator (from which the country takes its name) and commemorates the eighteenth century Franco-Spanish Geodesic Mission which fixed its approximate location; they also contain the Museo Etnográfico Mitad del Mundo, Ethnographic Museum Middle of the Earth, a museum about the indigenous people ethnography of Ecuador.

The 30-metre-tall (98 ft) monument was constructed between 1979 and 1982 by Architect and Contractor Alfredo Fabián Páez with Carlos Mancheno President of Pichincha's Province Council to replace an older, smaller monument built by the Government of Ecuador under the direction of the geographer Luis Tufiño in 1936.

It is made of iron and concrete and covered with cut and polished andesite stone. The monument was built to commemorate the first Geodesic Mission of the French Academy of Sciences, led by Louis Godin, Pierre Bouguer and Charles Marie de La Condamine, who, in the year 1736, conducted experiments to test the flattening at the poles of the characteristic shape of the Earth, by comparing the distance between a degree meridian in the equatorial zone to another level measured in Sweden. The older monument was moved 7 km (4.3 miles) to a small town near there called Calacalí

The four points of the compass were marked along with a line denoting the position of the equator. I went up to the viewing gallery just below the globe and spotted Jackie below me, resplendent in his new “Café de Colombia” cycling shirt. I descended quickly through the Museum of Ecuadorian Geography and caught up with him.

He had made good time despite a puncture en route. We then ran about doing the tourist bit, taking photographs of each other at the equator and with one foot on each side. It started to spit with rain and, as there was little to see apart from the monument in a desert plain, we headed back into town.

I caught the bus almost immediately and after a while we passed Jackie with his Walkman on and wraparound sunglasses, pedalling furiously uphill. The return journey cost 25 Sucres, the same as the outward bus fare. By now it was pissing down with rain.

The other passengers were a mixture of locals, some in ragged work clothes carrying bundles while others were in their Sunday best finery, all jammed together. Back in Quito I checked the café where I was supposed to meet Jackie, but it was closed. I ran back to the hotel, trying to dodge the rain and the cascades of water from overflowing gutters.

After a discussion in the hotel restaurant with some of the other guests we decided to have a party. Jackie and I went downtown to the supermarket and bought a couple of bottles of dark rum, a huge flagon of port and an assortment of fruit to make a punch. We combed the street market area looking for a pineapple in the pissing rain. In the end we got one in the supermarket.

Back at the hotel we got underway with preparations. Gerard from New York supplied his Walkman with speakers, and we bought a plastic bucket for 300 Sucres to make the punch in. At 19:00 hrs. everybody abandoned plans to eat and started drinking in our room.

We had a full house with two Swedish girls, two Swedish guys, a Swiss girl, the young English “doctor” and American Gerald. It was a good party, but the lethal punch meant that I got drunk too quickly and had to go up onto the roof for some air and respite.

Back at the party we chatted, danced and generally pissed around until 01:00 hrs. When the last guest left our room Jackie continued to sing Bob Marley songs at the top of his voice for about twenty minutes. A good time was had by all!