Middle of the World

From the itinerary:  At 9:00 am, you meet with your English speaking guide Pedro Pastor in the lobby of the hotel. Full day tour with guide: visit of the crater of the Pululahua volcano, The Middle of the World (Mitad del Mundo) and Intiñan museum. Drop-off in the afternoon

in your hotel.

We fought jet lag most of the night, made an hour worse because the UK changed time in the middle of it. We were able to rouse ourselves in time for a shower and coffee in time to meet our guide for 9am.

Imagine my surprise when Pedro Pastor turned out to be my guide from January 2023 at Napo Wildlife Reserve. It was a shock (in a good way) for both of us. The further weird thing is that I had a similar experience in Nepal when I saw my guide from Bhutan at breakfast and that was only a month ago....Since last January, Pedro has been able to realize his dream of buying land for a hummingbird sanctuary and has had several groups of tourists already, before it's even officially open. His wife and 7 year old daughter are doing well.  We will be seeing him again at the end of our trip for a half day city tour.

Weather was sunny and up to about 80 until about 2:30 when the rain started. Thankfully, we were back before the rain started.

First stop was the Pululahua volcano crater.

Pululahua is an indigenous word for medicinal herbs because many were found there. The crater is not filled with water, but has several farms at the bottom. We saw some local falcons and buzzards flying. The clouds were coming in and we didn't get a good view of the other volcanos in the area.

Our exercise for the day was hiking, but we made a wise decision to stop about halfway. I didn't want to risk a tumble or bad reaction for Chris with the altitude. We walked down from 9,250 to 8969 feet. The path wasn't great and we didn't have hiking poles, but it was good enough and there were many switchbacks which made for an easier hike. Still on the way up it was hot and we both got quite sweaty.

From the Crater we went to the  Intiñan Museum and skipped the Middle of the World which, we were given to understand, was all shops.

The Museum would have been more interesting if I hadn't been to the Ecuadorian Amazon last year, but still, it was fun to have a photo at the equator.

And we always enjoy seeing shrunken heads, guinea pigs and hummingbirds

It's also nice to know I weigh less at the equator...

Lunch was at a local restaurant where we had empanadas, local potato soup with avocado/corn/local cheese, and chicken. We gave the guinea pig a miss - I had it before and enjoyed it, but seeing them in the pens, and on sticks next to the ovens before lunch was a bit of a turn off.

We had the rest of the afternoon off to relax and prepare for our flights early tomorrow morning.

No photos of dinner because we just ate downstairs in the hotel and it was nothing to write home about....