For today we headed towards Quito, our forts stop was to the equator, 0°, 0°. Standing half in the northern hemisphere and half in the souther hemisphere was pretty awesome, how many people get to say they were standing in two at once! Had a littler history lesson and learned that basically in grade school when we were learning about the world, it's rotating on the wrong axis. So instead of having Antarctica on the very bottom below South America, it should be on the right side and North America should essentially be on the bottom of the globe.
After all of our typical American touristy photos we made out way to the beautiful and ever famous museum of Ecuadorian painter Guayasamin. Upon arrival we were given a very detailed but quick tour of each of his paintings. His paintings were both familiar to me but also had great detail to them with a strong story for why he created them. What was also interesting to me was that the majority of he museum had paintings of people but they were skeletons. My favorite painting had to have been La Ternura. It depicts a skeleton mother embracing her skeleton child, with her head on the child's head. It also was called "As Long As I Live I'll Always Love You", this painting was dedicated to his mother and all mothers in the world. His mother died at a very young age, and when she was alive she was an inspiration and biggest supporter to his career. His father was the complete opposite and wanted him to do something important with his life.
Although the museum was amazing in every way, we didn't have much time to stop at each painting and really admire them individually. Nor did we have time to really purchase anything as well. Then we made our way to the capital of Ecuador and got a city tour. We visited two churches, one that held a saint for every providence in Ecuador. The other which was known as the Church of Gold. Our tour concluded at the top of a very high hill with a statue of the in labor Mary Magdelin. It is the tallest structure in all of Quito and if any other building was to be built, it may not be taller than Mary.
