a little cameo

Quito, Ecuador, May 2004

As my 25th birthday approached, I started coming up with ideas of where I would be to spend my quarter of a century. As I was travelling, the options were pretty much endless. I´m not sure where the idea came from, but I decided that visiting the equator and jumping backwards and forwards from Southern Hemisphere to Northern Hemisphere and doing a tip-toe balancing act on the equator would be an awesome way to celebrate my day.

I was travelling on my own and hadn´t met anyone else at that stage who wanted to tag along to the various equator attractions in Ecuador, so I went on my own. I visited the small, interactive site which is on the actual equator and did all the cool things like balance an egg on a nail head and watch water swirl down the plugholes clockwise, anti-clockwise, and straight down (over the equator). I tried my hand at shooting a blowdart into a cactus leaf and generally had a great time.

I then went to the official equatorial monument, a large and bland site, that is just slightly off calculation and therefore not on the actual equator.

Back at the hostel I went out to dinner with some others and when they found out it was my birthday they ordered me a cake and a sparkler. It was a great day.

Ever since this birthday, I´ve always done something interesting, different, or just gotten away from it all so that I could spend my birthday doing something that would make me happy because in my early twenties, I realised that my birthday is only special to me, so rather than rely on others to make it a great day for me, I had to take it into my own hands. Since then I´ve hiked in national parks, gone parasailing and kitesurfing, rafted through the Grand Canyon, visited Angkor Wat, biked around Rottnest Island, climbed the Sydney Harbour Bridge and hit the beach in Mexico.

This year, I´m back in South America for my birthday, just over the mountains a bit from Ecuador where the birthday tradition started. So today, for my first birthday in Colombia I went tubing in the rapids of the river in Minca, not far from Santa Marta. I never really expected to start such a tradition as I stood on the equator, but I love it and I´m keen to see what exciting things I do and interesting places I go for the birthdays to come.

* If you are interested in more information about the museum at the equator, The Souls of My Shoes blogged about her recent visit and more fun activities that can be found at the equator.

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