Today, we took our time in the morning because we had a "free day" and didn't have to get up at any particular time. We planned to sleep in and go at 10:00 am. Good thing, because last night was a late night. We did our best to make sure everyone was in their rooms by 11:00 pm - pretty successful at that, however, at around 11:30 am, the girls came out of their room - screaming. I got out of bed to investigate and discovered that there was a fire burning outside the center property, on the street near a dumpster. Since it wasn't on the property, we figured that it wasn't anything to worry about. Later, the police showed up, pushed it away from the dumpster and left. No fire department response.
So, needless to say, people did not go to bed at a reasonable hour.
This morning, we also found out that one of the kids from the St. Peter's Prep group was sick, so his chaperones, Mike and Tom wanted to let him sleep in a bit this morning. When everyone was ready to go, all 22 of us jumped on the Mitad del Mundo bus and took a 25 minute ride to the museum.
There are two museums dedicated to the equator. The one we attended is called IntiNañ and is the indigenous focused museum so there are displays about things that would be found in the Amazon.
[I had started writing this on our last day in Ecuador and lost motivation! So sorry. Now, I will just pick up where I had left off].
Here's the group at the entrance. This open air museum features demos and experiments about the magnetic forces on the equator. This next series of videos is my favorite.
On the equator, water goes straight down.
In the Southern Hemisphere (she moved the basin south of the line), water goes clockwise. She uses the leaves so that you can see the effect better.
Then, she moved the basin north of the line to the Northern Hemisphere...and guess what? Water goes counter-clockwise!
Some other interesting facts about the equator - there is always (year-round) 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of night; it is almost physically impossible to walk in s straight line with your eyes closed on the equator, and it's very hard to resist force (the experiment we did was to clasp our two hands above our heads, another person was to pull them down - it was easy to resist in either the northern or southern hemisphere, but darn near impossible on the equator).
Also at this museum, there are alpacas! Alpacas are smaller than llamas, as the diagram shows. They are cousins and often confused. What we saw were definitely alpacas! (many of our blankets and jackets purchased at Otavalo are made with alpaca fleece).
After leaving the museum, following a tip from the Fordham Prep chaperone, Pierre, we ventured to Fiambre's Restaurant about 100 m from the museum. This restaurant had been featured on Andrew Zimmern's "Bizarre Foods" show on the Travel Channel.
Here is the link to the show, in case you are interested:
When we approached the fine dining establishment, this was our view and we were greeted by the smell of campfire and roast pig. See the guinea pigs (cuyes) on the sticks??
We ordered two for our group. The idea was to give everyone a taste. This is how they were served, cut into 6 pieces, two hind quarters, a head, the torso and two front quarters, on a bed of lettuce with a slice of avocado.
Looks like we enjoyed it! They are very low in fat, also don't have much meat, but are quite flavorful.
Reece and Justin trying to get at the brain. Finally, they succeeded - Nora, Justin and Eva ate some. They said it tasted like cheese. During the rest of the meal, they kept trying to figure out which type of cheese it most resembled.
Out back, they kept rabbits (conejos) and guinea pigs (cuyes). If you are someone famous like Andrew Zimmern, you get to choose which cuy you'd like to eat! I am so glad that they didn't give us that option!
All the kids tried it - some liked it better than others. Ella swore that she would become vegan following this trip!
When we returned to the CMT#2, the girls from Dallas had decorated the dining room for Fourth of July. We had hot dogs, french fries and black beans for dinner - about as authentic as you can get in Ecuador!
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