Weirdness at the Middle of the World
Written: Nov 02 '00 (Updated Nov 10 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Odd and a little wacky.
Cons: Odd and a little wacky.
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| Steve_NC's Full Review: Ecuador |
Review Topic: Sights & Attractions
Review Topic: Sights & AttractionsSTRANGE PHENOMENA REPORTED FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE WORLD!
Outbreaks of Spastic Dancing, Kissing Orgies Blamed on "Imaginary" Line!
Gruesome Guinea Pig Sacrifices Carried Out in Shadow of Pyramid-Shaped Building!
For years visitors to the forbidding Andes Mountains of Ecuador have returned with puzzling tales of a place called La Mitad del Mundo, "The Middle of the World."
They tell of bodies twisting in crazy contortions, of human beings seized by a compulsion to hop back and forth over a stripe on the ground, of couples succumbing to "kissing madness." Most baffling, the victims of these seizures blame an object that experts say is imaginary!
La Mitad is a monument built on the Equator at the spot where the invisible line dividing the northern from the southern hemisphere was first located by a scientific expedition in 1735. Even though the Equator cuts through a number of countries as it circles the globe, its mysterious power seems to be concentrated here.
Steve Smith visited La Mitad more than a year ago, and is just now able to talk about his experience. "I had been in Quito for five days and was anxious to get out of the city some," Smith says. "I had heard about La Mitad, so I went looking for someone to drive me. Right away I got a spooky feeling because no one would agree to go there unless I paid them!"
Finally, someone from the Aventour company offered to take him to La Mitad for $60, which also covered other nearby sights and lunch. In a Land Rover they drove out of Quito and northward through the mountains. It got hotter and hotter as they went; the guide said this was because they were descending from Quito's 9,000-foot level into the country’s “arid zone.” With the heat increasing the closer they got to La Mitad, though, Smith secretly wondered if the place might be a conduit to hell itself.*
Although La Mitad is just 16 miles from Quito, it seemed to take forever to get there as Smith’s guide, possibly having second thoughts, tried to show him almost everything else first. This included the volcanic crater of Pululahua, now a lush valley dotted with farms. A trail leads from the top of the ancient crater rim to the floor below, where tourist ranches have sprouted among the farms.
Finally they arrived at La Mitad.
“There loomed before me a sort of pyramid topped by a sphere – the Equator monument. Surrounding it was a little town built to resemble a Spanish colonial city, right down to a bullring – a town where no one actually lives.”
Middle of the World City, as it’s called, does have gift shops, restaurants and possibly a post office. Smith isn’t sure about the post office since he didn’t see it, but it’s described on the Web site www.middleoftheworld.com/ in these exact words:
The turist complex counts on a Post Office, located in the first floor of the building that this forehead to the monument, in the same one that you will be able to send your mail to the person who wishes, in the place of the world that you want.
“My guide paid our admission at the front gate,” Smith continues. “We parked, got out and started walking up a boulevard lined with huge glowering busts of the members of the original Equator expedition.
“We came to a door in the base of the monument and entered.” The inescapable weirdness of the place struck Smith again: someone had decided that a staircase would be a great place for a museum! Visitors start at the bottom and ascend nine levels in spiral fashion, pausing at each landing/room to view a display on one of Ecuador’s different ethnic groups.
“The displays were actually interesting,” Smith says, “and I thought that surely this was the most creative concept in museum architecture since the Land of Make Believe’s museum-go-round on ‘Mr. Rogers.’”
At the top was a place from which to gaze out over the entire site. From here Smith saw the Equator for the first time – a yellow stripe on the ground extending from one side of the monument to the nearest gift shop. He also saw people paying obeisance to The Line: lying on it, sitting on it, squatting over it, dancing over it, or just standing astride it with a foot in each hemisphere, as if to soak up (through the crotch?) the forces of equatorial balance.
Descending to the ground via elevator (why hadn’t the museum’s creators stuck a few baskets and spears in here, too? he wondered), Smith was soon in personal contact with The Line.
“I couldn’t help myself,” he remembers, voice trembling. “It was like something took over and I had to do the ‘straddling the Equator’ thing, too. Lord help me, I even got my guide to take a picture of it.” (See smith.iwarp.com/ecuador/equator.jpg )
Some visitors to La Mitad that day were shaking hands across the Equator as the cameras snapped away. Others were hugging across it. Couples were madly kissing across it.
Although he didn’t see it, Smith says he has heard that some individuals jump back and forth across The Line, over and over again, just to be able to claim that they’ve crossed the Equator a thousand times.
Smith finally pulled himself away and staggered to the gift shop, where a scale had been set up for visitors to weigh themselves. “There’s a belief that you weigh less at the Equator because you’re farther away from the center of the earth there. I tried it, but who can say? The scale gives your weight in those foreign ‘kilograms’ and I’m an American.”
Before prevailing on his guide to take him away from La Mitad, Smith noted one further oddity. Next to the aforementioned scale was a photograph of a man weighing himself at that spot. The man’s hair stood straight up, as if dangerous Equator rays were shooting through his body. He was identified only as ‘Don King.’ (See smith.iwarp.com/ecuador/scale.jpg )
Smith and his guide lunched in the nearby real town of San Antonio. Among other delicacies, the restaurant offered barbecued cuy. Cuy is guinea pig, which is doubtlessly sacrificed by the thousands each year to please native tastes as well as tourist yens for the exotic. Although said to be a dish found throughout Ecuador, San Antonio was the only place Smith ever found it – right there in the brooding shadow of La Mitad.
“I was going to try it but then found out they bring it to you with its little face and feet still attached,” Smith says with a shudder. “Instead I settled for potato soup sprinkled with dried goat’s blood.”
Is La Mitad really the “Middle of the World?” Have its hordes of tourist-pilgrims discovered one of the world’s great power spots, or are they fooling themselves?
The last laugh may be on La Mitad’s creators. As Smith’s guide revealed to him on their last stop of the day, the “real” Equator actually may run a couple of miles farther north. There on a windswept hilltop, with no gift shops or museums or contorting bodies in sight, sits an unimpressive pile of stones that some say marks The Line as plotted by ancient Incan astronomers. (See smith.iwarp.com/ecuador/inca_spot.jpg )
Whichever location you favor, Smith recommends that everyone visit the Equator when in Ecuador (which means Equator, showing the grip The Line’s presence has long held on the native imagination). “You’ll never again be quite right ... I mean, quite the same.”
NOTE: The complete photographic record of Steve Smith’s sojourn in Ecuador is posted at smith.iwarp.com/ecuador/
*Whether or not La Mitad proves to be a portal to hell, Smith is convinced that the Devil himself will not be found there. See
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Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
Steve_NC
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Member: Steve Smith
Location: Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Reviews written: 28
Trusted by: 28 members
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