We took a crowded metro-bus for what seemed like forever. The bus was too crowded to find space to stand without being in someone's armpit. Needless to say it was not very fun. The 15 mile trip took one and a half hours. When we arrived, we headed up to the original monument which, even though it is off by around 800 meters, was amazing! It was quite imposing. We walked around the complex for awhile, browsing souvenir shops and such. After that, we headed over to the real equator where there was a museum. The museum was directly over the equator. On our tour, we saw everything, from shrunken heads to water experiments. One of the grossest things was a fish called the candiru that crawls up into your penis when you pee in the Amazon jungle. >.< It's actually attracted by human urine.
This is the Candiru Fish
This is a real shrunken head
This is a mural of someone removing the skull
After this, we headed down to the real equator and performed some experiments on it. For example, as many people may have heard before, water does swirl a different way on either side of the equator! When you are directly on the equator, the water just goes down. It doesn't even swirl.
This is what draining water looks like on the equator
We also performed some tests of our strength. If you put your hands above your head and have someone push down on them, it's relatively easy to keep them up and resist. It's different on the equator, though. If you did this on the equator, your hands would just go down easily. We tried it and it worked. I'm still a little confused about it though. If anyone knows something that might explain this phenomenon, leave an answer in the comments below. At the end of the day, we took a taxi back home, which was a nice change from the public bus.
