From the middle ...to the end?

The day trip to the equator line and ¨el mittad del mundo¨ (the middle of the world) marks a geographical extreme and hopefully makes our trip stretch from ¨el mittad del mundo¨ to el fin del mundo¨ (the end of the world) at the bottom of South America.

Renee visiting both hemispheres at one time.

(well, according to the measurements made in the 1700s!... With the instruments they had and being only 2-300ms out, I´ll give it to them.)

The view east along the equator line from the top of the monument.

Amazingly enough, the original surveyors from spain and france (and helped by locals) were only a few hundred meters out despite only using the stars and triangulation!

(There is also a ¨real location¨museum where they also do dodgy experiments with drain water circling around each way when you pull the plug (and straight down ¨on¨the ecuator) ... despite the bowls being only 20ms apart! Hah! Yeah right!

A rose amongst thorns! :D

Some typical cacti in between the ¨mittad del mundo¨ theme park where the original cartographers measured the equator to be ...and a smaller newer museum that claims to be on the ¨true¨ location of the ecuator.

Mr fix-it at your service.

The water heater at our Quito host families house died and I dont think they have 24h repair guys here. It was fix it myself or face the weekend of cold showers!

All I had was two flathead screwdrivers (despite everything being phillips heads) electrical tape and a bread tie. And for all you synics out there.... I got it working again despite never seeing one before! (blocked gas jets and a sticky solenoid... the heater had problems too.)

¨Choclo y queso¨ (corn and cheese). Renees scrummy lunch at the middle of the world.
One of the few vegetarian dishes you can get here in carnivore-land when not in the city. As you can see.... this is one of the more dodgy interpretations of it!
(same price as my home made hamburger, chips & coke combo mind you! ... a whole $1.50!) You can get awesome 3 course set lunches from between $1.50 and $2.50 with a fresh juice or beer.

There is a drawback to learning spanish. At the moment I (Tim) have found myself thinking in ¨spanglish¨ which even confuses myself sometimes and lately I have found I have been speaking both spanish AND english poorly.

But thats only half the story. Renee has had more interesting language issues lately.

Her spanish is good enough that she has been having indepth girly talks with our ¨host mami¨. In one discussion, it was mentioned that the son was currently in his first sexual relationship and she didnt really like it since he still lives at home. The house is quite open and many of the rooms dont have walls all the way to the ceiling. Renee decided to ask ¨...can you hear them?¨

Unfortunately for Renee, in spanish, the ending of a word often changes who the action or reference is directed too. Our host mums eyes grew the size of saucers and with a very puzzled look on her face, it didnt take Renee too long to realise she had formed the words... ¨...can you hear us?¨ !!!

Luckily the misunderstanding was easily corrected and everyone got a good laugh out of it.

The fantastic scene of low level clouds swallowing huge mountains isnt uncommon here.

We are taking a break from spanish classes this week and heading into the amazon jungle to wrestle caiman (alligators/crocodiles) and fend off pirahnas. (Its OK, there are no Anacondas in these parts Sue!)

Hopefully we will be back to continue this blog in a week or two!