MUSEO DE SITIO INTIÑAN

A must-see! This amusing open-air museum will appeal to the whole family. It explains in a clear, pictorial, playful and practical way the ancestral customs of Ecuador and its geographical position from which it takes its name. The site also offers the possibility to try several amusing experiments on the equatorial line, at the 0° latitude. You can try to balance an egg on a nail, or observe, depending on the hemisphere you are in, which way a leaf turns in a tub of water once the siphon is opened. The guides will invite you to try to walk straight by closing your eyes on the equatorial line. Don't take the animations too literally if you are a physics buff, they are mainly used to explain the principle of the earth's attraction and the Coriolis force and the guides sometimes use pedagogical subterfuges to highlight phenomena that are of course not so easy to detect in reality, because the equator is not an absolute line. The guides are very professional and give the tour in Spanish, English or French if there is a group of French speakers. Good to know: if you have your passport with you on the day of the visit, you can get a "Mitad del Mundo" stamp as a souvenir of your passage on the line marking half the planet. A shop selling handicrafts from the indigenous communities living in the area is located inside the museum. Reasonable prices.