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Nov 26, 2008 - Equator Week-end
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One of the many beautiful mountain waterfalls Lush green mountains We finally made it to the Equator! 
Here we are in Guayaquil, Ecuador, on a week-end with nothing to do. We met with Melissa, the agent handling our truck shipment, Friday night. She told us her office was closed for the week-end, and nothing would happen. So, why not go to the beach? We headed out about 12:00 noon for Salinas, on the Pacific coast, but took the wrong road out of Guayaquil. We are now heading North, so we decided to go to the Equator - why not? We were planning on driving about 2 hours to the coast, and on the map it looked like about 5 hours to the Equator, and when else would we ever get to see the Equator?

We drive all day, and make it to Santo Domingo, Ecuador. We're about 2 hrs. from Quito (or so we think) so stop before it gets dark. We did have a wonderful Chinese dinner with great fried wontons & shrimp fried rice - all for only $7.50.

The next day, Sunday, we head out for our "2 hour Sunday drive" to see the Equator. It ended up taking us 5 hours to get to the Equator which is at an elevation of 2,750 meters, or 9,048'!

The Equator was impressive. It rained a little while we were there which made it cold. We were surprised to be cold on the Equator!

The Equator in Spanish is named Linea Equinoccial or Linea Ecuatorial or Mitad del Mundo. There was a young lady who explained about the astrological aspects of being on the Equator. You can see all the constellations at the Equator. If you are not aware, there are constallations specific to each hemisphere. At this Equator Monument, there is a long yellow vertical cylinder. It was explained that when the sun is directly over the Equator, it shines directly down the cylinder, creating no shadow. Also, there are no shadows at the Equator during the 2 longest days of the year. We enjoyed our "tour" of the Equator.

Now to head back to home base in Guayaquil. We decided to drive through Quito since our other route took us through a small town that was having an annual celebration "of the Virgin". That town had taken us 1 hour to pass through on Sat.; so we thought that it would be much quicker to drive directly through Quito and by-pass the small towns. Little did we know that Quito is the WORST city we've driven through in South America!

We finally made it past Quito, and stopped for the night. We were told, yes there are hotels in the next town. Little did we know that there was 1 hotel with 3 names, and it was at a service station. The room was small, but had clean sheets, and the cost was only $12! We made it through the night, even with the noise of a 24 hr. service station, and returned to our home base of Guayaquil on Monday. We are now much wiser, spent a lot of time in the car (again!), but saved money from not being in Guayaquil.

So the next time you take a wrong road going to Target, just say - why not head to the Equator instead? You may be surprised by the adventure you'll find.


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