Day 20 So, the equator is where??

This little guy was following us around a bit in the town square.
Finally, Paul asked him what he was up to.  He assured Paul
that he wasn't hanging around us to pick our pockets but
wanted to hear us speak English!  He wants to be a guide someday!

The final day of our tour.  But, before you check out, we are going to a birding retreat for tomorrow night and our final day on holiday.  So the blog isn't over yet.

Today we split our time between Quito's colonial quarter and the Middle of the World Monument, (the equator).  All told, there are 25 historical churches in Quito.  These aren't just churches, these are CHURCHES.  All historical, all jammed together, all in need of repair.......but the few we visited are beautiful.  The Spaniards were very busy building churches and either converting or killing the few remaining Incas and the more resilient indigenous population. 

We started our walking tour in the San Francisco Plaza, built in the middle of the 1500s. As we went from church to church, they started to all run together, a few pictures below.

All cathedrals have magnificent stained glass to be enjoyed "looking through" to the outside.
Rarely does the sun shine through the stained glass so we can enjoy "looking at".  Amazing.

This is the Franciscan Church,.  Everything on the inside
is covered with gold leaf.  No pictures allowed I got this one
then was told no more.

Next up was Ecuador's interpretation of the equator.  First, Gloria and I visited the equator years ago in Uganda.  That was a small, broken down plaster monument that we could stand on either side of.  Ecuador went BIG.  Interestingly, it is in the wrong location!  It is called "cartographical pinpoint straying from the truth".  This site was chosen in 1936 with a small marker.  It was replaced in 1979 with the monument pictured below.  GPS still hadn't been invented......  Indeed the actual equator is 800 feet to the north.

Now, this gets even more interesting.  Since 1979 archeologists have uncovered a flat worship area dated to 500BC on an adjacent hill, (see photo below).  There is a 'line' on it which has been interpreted as an 'equator line', on the EXACT GPS confirmed equator line, 800 feet north of the monument!!!  In order for this ancient civilization to have calculated this with the stars, moon and sun, they had to realize the earth was round and it orbited the sun.  (You should be having a chill going up your spine right now). 

This is the real, accurate equator.  Ancient intelligence or aliens?  I'm firmly
on the side of ancient intelligence.