We met the tour group and we are off and running

We have 24 people in our tour group plus the tour manager. There are people from the U.S., Canada and England.  Everyone seems well-traveled and ready to go on a two week whirlwind tour of Ecuador and Peru. We did a bus tour today of Quito.  We stopped at many places that Cindy and I traveled past on our hop on hop off tour.  It was nice to get a close up view of things and a good explanation of what we were seeing.  As you can see in the photos we were in rain all day (for those of you from California that is the clear wet stuff that falls from the sky).

Presidential Palace

The changing of the guard.(A little different than at Buckingham Palace)

Quito is at 9,000+ feet so it is not hard to get up in the clouds.  The restaurant we stopped at was up in the clouds.

View from our lunch stop.  You can see the clouds rolling in in both photos.  They get so many dense clouds rolling across the hill top they have a special way to identify the woman’s and men’s restrooms to make sure you use the correct one if the clouds are too dense to see. (see photos below)

After lunch we stopped at the site Equator museum.  Most of the museum is outside and they show you the effects of being on the equator and just to the north and just to the south of the equator.  We all have heard about the water as it drains: it spins in one direction (counter clockwise) north of the equator and it spins the other direction (clockwise) south of the equator.  Well, did you know right on the equator it doesn’t spin at all but just drains straight down. We saw a demonstration with a tub of water sitting right on the equator line and the water did drain without spinning. They refilled the tub and moved it about 10 feet to the south of the equator and drained it. The water spun clockwise. They again filled the tub moved it about 10 feet north of the equator and drained it and the water spun counter clockwise.  We were amazed that in such a small distance from the equator the water was affected like that.

     Standing on the Equator   

   

Watching the water drain straight out

In the foreground, Cindy is balancing an egg on the head of a nail right on the equator line

Bill trying to walk a on the equator line with eyes closed. Close to impossible .

We went out to dinner that night with some of the group and headed back to the hotel for an early flight to the Galapagos Islands the next morning.