Ecuador is so named because it lies on the Equator.  To commemorate this, the government of one of the local providences north of Quito built a 10 story monument surrounded it by a "colonial style town" and named it Mitad del Mundo (Middle of the World).  While this is probably the exact definition of a tourist trap, you can't come to Ecuador without making a trip to the Equator.



Most interesting about this monument is that the exact Equator Line is something of a debate.  The monument was built in 1979-82 on the exact location of what was then considered to be the Equator. With invention of GPS, the equator is now considered to be about 500 feet more to the North (apparently due to the datum used by GPS; WGS84). A number of private "equator museums" have popped up over the years because of this and the fact that the equator isn't really all that rare in Ecuador; is over 300 miles long.  Many of these museums show tricks that are considered only possible on the "real" equator. They include standing an egg on its end, showing that water drains differently (clockwise/counterclockwise) on each side of equator, and difficulty walking the equator with your eyes closed and arms held out.  Truth is, none of these tricks are real, I had actually seen one of them used on an info-mercial to sell shoe insoles.

Even the so called "real" equator line at the museum was about 250 feet off from my GPS. To get this pictures I had to walk across the street.

Apparently this problem isn't exclusive to the Equator.  Similarly, the line marking the Prime Meridian in Greenwich, England is roughly 100 meters off from how modern GPS calculates it.