Today was awesome. My host mother, along with Veronica and Fanny and Victor took three of us gringitos to the equator, or en espanol, la mitad del mundo (half of the world). The equator is only about a half hour north from where we live. When we arrived there, a group of Indigenous people was performing a long dance routine. Their dance was just incredible. It was almost like Andean square dancing/line dancing. To the beat of Andean drums and to the melody of captivating pipe whistles, the dancers performed dazzling routines to act out their culture with emotion. All the many dances were complicated and creative, involving intricate moves between couples and the group.
One dance in particular struck me as exceptionally creative. A large pole was brought to the center of the floor, with about twelve long ribbons tied to point atop the pole. Each ribbon was claimed by a dancer who stretched their ribbon out to the radius to form a colorful circle. While dancing and turning on each beat, the dancers weaved the ribbons between each other, creating a beautiful braded pattern along the pole. When the weaving was about a quarter way down the pole, the dancers reversed, and danced the pattern back to untied ribbons again. (See movie if that description was confusing)
Then we walked to the equator itself. The line is painted on the ground, and we took touristy pictures straddling the line. It turns out that when GPS first came out, it was discovered that mitad del mundo is actually is actually about 100 meters off the equator...but for all intents and purposes i stood on the equator.
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