6th August Manta

6^th August – Manta – Ecuador

Manta is situated on Ecuador’s Coastal Lowlands just 67 miles south of the Equator it was founded in 1563 by the Spanish.

Population in 2010 - 217,553

Temperature doesn’t vary much between summer and winter but they have a wet season when the humidity is extremely high (Dec – May).

We found the temp pleasant around mid to high twenties.

Currency is US$. Although they will off load local Peso’s to you in change so it pays to pay for everything in small denomination to minimise useless change.

This is the place where the famous ‘Panama Hat’ originated and is still made. I think everyone on the ship will now be walking around with a Panama Hat on.

Coffee is a large export along with cocoa, and they have oil although I didn’t see any refineries.

Fishing is huge particularly Tuna the Tuna boats are huge I have never seen such large fishing boats although fishing is carried out from all sizes of craft.

There isn’t a cruise ship terminal and we berthed alongside a commercial wharf.

Adjacent to us on the other side of the wharf a huge Tuna boat (ship) was unloading massive frozen Tuna into large shipping containers on the back of trucks. This went on all day and this was only one ship. The smell went with it.

Sitting on top of this particular vessel was a chopper obviously use for Tuna spotting but while we were there it took off and headed for the city once un-loading was completed so I guess the skipper was going home.!!

Four of us grabbed a cab and took a drive shopping and looking and the place is a sandy, dry desolate looking area with a lot of obvious poverty. Some of the buildings people were living in you would put chooks in and would be bulldozed over anywhere else.

We were advised because of the obvious poverty not to expose ourselves as being tourists (that’s a joke) not to carry jewellery or back packs with World Cruise plastered over them, in other words keep a low profile. However you use a bit of common-sense and we never felt threatened or uneasy and most people were friendly and helpful.

NB: 90% of the time I cannot get emails to send most of the time when I can access wifi I use the smart phone app ‘LINE’ to text or phone.

I have received emails from my brother but cannot get back to him and I have tried sending one line emails to Lisa and Nancy’s sister with little luck and I’m told the problem is with the ships wifi set up.  

Two sea days and then we are off to Machu Picchu