De Retour a Quito

That Otavalo evening we danced the night away to the beats of a colombian salsa band in the main square to the occasion of the festival de yamor (corn fesitval, yippee!). Its th best live music we've had so far on the trip and in no time we were dancing with some drunk locals and stepping to the salsa beat until well after midnight.

The next morning we took the bus back though the desert hills to Quito where we rushed to the sunday car market in the south. Its a huge lot of open land with hundreds of cars spread out for sale- from '70s hippiemobiles (my dream car) to rattling pickups and shiny new jeeps. We found a few cars we were interested in, including a really cheap VW Amazona which conveniently started without any keys (uuh...). In the end, we decided not to by a car cuz it would be too much trouble with the insurance and border crossings, but it was still lots of fun doing something untouristy for once.

Today we took the neverending bus to the Midad del Mundo (Middle of the world) where they have a huge toursit park which the equatorial line runs through. We took turns taking photos standing (and SM rolling) on either side of the equator in this vast people-devoid park which serves absolutely no purpose at all except for having a huge monument with a red line. After wasting some time there we went next door where they had another museum with another red line in a different place (hmm...) which was way better than the first one. This one had interactive exhibits from seeing the water drain in different directions in each hemisphere to balancing eggs (I even got an egg balancing certificate!!) and some history of the local people as well. Apparently the actual equator is 12km thick, but this was the very center of it.

Here we met our guide, Sophia, a tourism student who came with us to the free Jazz concert hosted in one of the many plazas of the old town. We listened to some superb jazz while eating crispy chicken wings and then returned home to prepare for the next week of travelling.