Middle of the Earth

This morning we went back to a couple of churches in Quito's old town that had been shut previously. Le Merced has a nice Baroque interior and pink and white plaster that looks like icing on a cake. Then we went to another colonial house, Casa Maria Augusta Urrutia, owned by a wealthy Ecuadorian who was widowed at the age of thirty and dedicated her life to charitable works. We prefered this house to the one we visited yesterday.

We picked up the hire car again and drove to the village of Calderon, famous for its brightly coloured dough decorations. We then drove on to Mitad del Mundo, the monument marking the Equator. However, the site for the monument is based on a French expedition in the 18 century and is 250m off (it has since been shown that previous indigenous cultures had correctly found the Equator prior to the French). After the Equator line we drove to a nearby crater but the view was obscured by heavy cloud.

Finally, after a tense drive, because we did not know if the road would be open or not, we arrived in Otavalo.