The Equator visit
During my 60th birthday visit I made a trip with my European friends and Moses to Bwindi national park to see the mountain gorillas. And on the trip, we also made a little stop over at the Equator.
Once you leave the city, the country side turns really green. Along the road you see many of those hothouses where flowers are grown commercially which eventually you can find in Hamburg or London at the Oeko special price.
And you also see a lot of the papyrus plants which provide the raw material for a lot of the mats and woven things which you see in Kampala
At the Equator now, the little human being can stand with one leg in the northern, and the other in the southern hemisphere. The place is properly marked and not many visitors would miss that opportunity!
And there is a large “information banner” which list some of the peculiarities of being on the equator.
It tells you, amongst other things, that here is the place where the water decides to flow clock (northern hemisphere) or anti clockwise (southern) in your drain. And on the equator it can’t decide and flows straight into the plug hole. I made the test at home, well and truly in the southern hemisphere and I get the impression that our water does not always know which way around it’s supposed to go according to Ugandan wisdom.
And the next thing they tell you is, that here, at the equator, the water boils already at 90 degrees instead of 100. Here those lovely people have overlooked the fact that the boiling point of water is dependent on altitude and not latitude. That means, we are at about 1500 meter above sea level here, hence water boils earlier than would be the case at sea level. Have to tell my friends in Berchtesgaden (Bavarian Alps) that they live on the equator!! But I guess, it’s too nice a story to be missed.
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