page_title: Quito
section_title: Outside the city
hierarchical_section_title: Quito / Points of interest / Outside the city
caption_attribution_description: Español: Mitad del Mundo, Quito, EcuadorEnglish: Mitad del Mundo, Quito, Ecuador
context_page_description: Quito is the capital of Ecuador, the country's most populous city, and at an elevation of 2,850 metres above sea level, it is the second highest official capital city in the world, and the closest to the equator. It is located in the Guayllabamba river basin, on the eastern slopes of Pichincha, an active stratovolcano in the Andes Mountains.
  In 2008, the city was designated as the headquarters of the Union of South American Nations.
  The historic centre of Quito is one of the largest, least-altered and best-preserved in the Americas. Quito and Kraków, Poland, were the first World Cultural Heritage Sites declared by UNESCO, in 1978. The central square of Quito is located about 25 kilometres south of the equator; the city itself extends to within about 1 kilometre of zero latitude. A monument and museum marking the general location of the equator is known locally as la mitad del mundo, to avoid confusion, as the word Ecuador is Spanish for equator.
context_section_description: La Mitad del Mundo (the middle of the world) is a small village administered by the prefecture of the province of Pichincha, 35 kilometres (22 mi) north of Quito. It has since been determined, with the use of Global Positioning System technology, that the actual equator is some 240 metres (790 ft) north of the monument area. Nearby is the Intiñan Solar Museum, which may be closer to the true equator. The Intiñan Solar Museum provides a demonstration which purports to show the Coriolis force causing a clockwise rotation of sink water a few meters south of the equator and a counterclockwise rotation a few meters north, but many scientific sources claim that this is implausible.
  Pululahua Geobotanical Reserve, located a few miles northwest from La Mitad del Mundo, contains the Pululahua volcano, whose caldera (crater) is visible from a spot easily accessible by car. It is believed to be one of only a few in the world with human inhabitants.
  Quito Zoo,
  located near the rural parish of Guayllabamba, about 20 kilometres (12 mi) outside Quito, has the biggest collection of native fauna in Ecuador, including several kinds of animals that are sometimes targeted in Ecuador in the illegal fur trade. The Zoo works in conservation and education in Ecuador and has successfully bred the endangered Andean condor.
  Maquipucuna Reserve is located in Quito's rural parish of Nanegal. This 14,000 acre high biodiversity rainforest and cloudforest reserve protects over 1966 species of plants (10% of Ecuador's plant diversity) and close to 400 bird species. This reserve, which is surrounded by a 34,000 acre protected forest, was declared an IBA (Important Bird Area) in 2005 and is the core of the conservation corridor for the spectacled bear (Andean bear) declared in 2013. The area has an ecolodge located in the northern end of the Reserve where the spectacled bear can be sighted for about two months every year.
  Some of the other nearby natural attractions are:
  Maquipucuna Reserve Conservation, community projects, bird watching, spectacled bear watching
  Bellavista Cloud Forest Reserve conservation and bird watching lodge
  Cayambe – Coca Ecological Reserve
  Papallacta & Oyacachi thermal springs
  Cotopaxi National Park
  Mindo Nambillo cloud forest
  Illiniza volcano
  Pasochoa Wildlife Refuge
  Pichincha volcano with its peaks Wawa Pichincha and Ruku Pichincha
caption: The monument at the equator (La Mitad del Mundo)
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