Mitad del mundo and ecuadorian hospitality

The day after the mountain biking trip, I decided to take an easy day to check out the sights near Quito. I headed to the Telefloriqo, a cable car that took passengers to the top of a bordering mountain for a commanding view of the valley below. On a clear day, the peaks of several volcanos can be spotted. At an altitude just below cloud base, it felt like the ceiling of the city. Instead of carrying up the mountain for a 3 hour hike to the crater of a volcano (yes another one) with the others, I took the next cable car down to go see the "Mitad Del Mundo", or center of the earth. On the way down, I found out that the family sharing the cable car was headed that way too, and offered to take me there. I accepted with no reservations and it turned out to be the nicest demonstration of Ecuadorian hospitality I've known. The Mitad del Mundo is a gigantic monument that marks what the Spanish thought was 0 degrees latitude, separating the northern and southern hemispheres, until modern GPS systems proved it wrong by about 200m. Oh well.

Next up: Moving on from Quito, but first, a visit to Banos