Latitude Zero

Book excerpt: The Equator has no tangible existence beyond maps, but yet it lives, a hugely significant symbol in the minds and hearts of navigators, travellers, poets, madmen and dreamers of all eras. It is the world's girdle, its 24,000 miles or 38,640 kilometres passing through the Ecuadorian Andes and the mist-shrouded Ruwenzori Mountains, running along the courses of both the Amazon and the Congo rivers, and cutting through Africa's vast Lake Victoria, and the coral atolls and volcanic hulk of Krakatoa, in the Indian Ocean. The eminent Italian historian Gianni Guadalupi, and writer Antony Shugaar, have put together this inspirational collection of amazing equatorial adventures. Many have responded to the challenge of the Line, setting out to discover the mysterious source of the Nile, the perils of the Doldrums ('the living death in life' Coleridge called it') or the powerful force of El Niño, the quest for a lost Eden and for El Dorado. Others have sought a new life, like Elisa the 'nude Baroness' of the Galapagos, or Robert Louis Stevenson, for whom the fearsome King Tembinok built at Latitude Zero in the Gilbert Islands, an enclave named Equator City. So many grand expeditions and projects, so many great explorers and eccentrics, make this anthology a joyous voyage of discovery.