Being back at altitude didn’t seem to bother us too much but being back in Quito was a bit of a downer as the place failed to grow on me. We did however make the most of the surrounds, starting with a trip up the Teleferiqo on another weather blessed day. 
The views over the sprawling mass of Quito were free of low cloud, though the cutting wind made me glad of the decision to bring a jacket, though Dan seemed content in a t-shirt and shorts. Testing out our legs, we climbed to the top of Rucu Pichincha at 4,698m in a little under two hours. With the sun out it was a great hike, and we didn’t have to stop too often to catch our breath. As we neared the summit though, a thick fog blew in and it was a judgement call whether to head back down as we’d be warned about getting caught up top in the fog. Being so close, I decided to quickly get to the top for a look and when Dan made it up we took a few quick photos and started descending. About ten minutes into the descent the fog had all but blown away and I 
was left ruing the missed opportunity to spend more time at the top. Getting back to the top of the Teleferiqo was a lot simpler, and achieved in around 30 minutes as it was easier to run down where possible and maintain momentum.
The next day we caught a bus out to Mitad del Mundo, the middle of the world, where the equator line passes through Ecuador. Entering into the overtly touristic Ciudad Mitad del Mundo, we were pretty underwhelmed by the whole complex and after taking the obligatory photo in front of the giant five-ton globe statue that was built to indicate the equator line, we departed pretty promptly. Perhaps it was the weather and a midweek visit that made it a ghost-town, but there certainly wasn’t much going on. This was coupled by the fact that several people had told me that the statue is several hundred metres from the actual equator line, and in my eyes, therefore redundant.
The saving grace of the trip out there was finding the Intiñan Solar Museum, which, although I’d heard about it, I had no idea where it was. We had to ask several people before getting directions and finally made our way up the road to it. Purportedly marking the true equator line using GPS technology, the Solar Museum also has quite an interesting and humourous tour through aspects of traditional indian culture, an array of preserved animals in jars including a giant anaconda, and instructions on how natives used to make the shrunken heads. The highlights though, centered around the paved equator line where information is given about the effect of the equinoxes at the equator (apparently you have no shadow briefly during the summer equinox) and a variety of interesting experiments are carried out.
One experiment involved a sink of water that swirled counter-clockwise in the northern hemisphere, clockwise in the southern hemisphere and no direction when sitting on the equator line. Another experiment involved balancing an egg on an nail, which is presumably easier on the equator line, though no one but our tour guide managed to do it. I was highly skeptical of all this gimmickry and had been told the sink effect was impossible but nevertheless it was entertaining and I still couldn’t quite figure out how they had managed the trick with the swirling water.
Ever since we’d gotten to Ecuador I had been planning to climb Cotopaxi, the second highest mountain in Ecuador, and now that we were in Quito, Dan had decided he wasn’t up to climbing it which threw a bit of a spanner in the works. I stewed for a few days trying to find a group to climb with, while Dan headed off on St Patrick’s day of all days to Baños. In the end I had to pay a considerable bit more to just hire my own guide and go, but all’s well that ends well as they say, and at least I could be certain that the only thing stopping me from getting to the top would be my own fitness.