After our
Panama Canal transit, we turned south and had one full sea day. At 8:00 AM on
Saturday, January 11th, we arrived at the port on Manta, Ecuador, on
the west coast of South America. All aboard was at 11:00 PM, so we had a full
day ashore ahead of us.
Manta is a
fishing port, and evidence of fishing is everywhere—from fishing boats and
nets, to fish for sale at the market. Like Peru to the south, Ecuador is
divided into three regions running north to south; coastal on the west (where
most people live), mountain in the center (where the capitol city of Quito is
located along with 20,703 foot Mount Chimborazo), and Rainforest to the east.
The official language is Spanish, but English is commonly spoken and the US
dollar is the official currency.
Our visit to
Ecuador was unusual in that Bill and Pat took separate excursions—Bill took the
excursion “Isla Corazon”—a visit to a marine bird sanctuary—while Pat took the
excursion “Tagua Buttons, Panama Hats, & Authentic Manteno Cuisine.” We
will describe our experiences separately. Fortunately, Bill had our friends
Jacob and Margaret George to travel with, and Pat had our friends Don and Lily
Tremblay and Dick and Cynthia Callaway to travel with.
Bill’s
excursion group contained about 28 people—small, which is always a plus—and he
joined his group for a two hour bus trip north to Bahia de Caraquez at the
mouth of a large bay. (“bahia” means “bay” in Spanish.) The bus drive was very
interesting with views of characteristic Ecuadorian flora and fauna along the
way. Upon arrival, we had refreshments of pastry and local fruit juice at an
outdoor hotel garden and then broke into two groups, boarding long, narrow boats
for our trip to Isla Corazon—an island in the bay which is a marine bird
sanctuary.
Since the
island is a protected area, we were required to have a park official on board
whom we picked up at a small pier along the way. This official spoke only
Spanish, but fortunately our guide who was with us spoke excellent English, and
he was very informative.
Isla Corazon
is only a small island (5 miles long and wide?) and is covered with mangrove
trees stretching out into the water. The
best views of bird life are from the water, and as we motored along, we spotted
tropical cormorants, magnificent frigate birds, pelicans, egrets, and blue
herons—both nesting and flying. We even saw a male frigate bird with its red
throat pouch inflated in full display.
After visiting
the island, the boat took us to the city of Bahia de Caraquez where we
disembarked and visited the city’s Museum of Archeology.
The museum
was fascinating—displaying pre-Columbian artifacts of gold, pottery, and
textiles. Ecuador has had many, many cultures over thousands of years, and each
culture had its own unique artifacts—well represented in the museum. The museum
even had a full scale replica of an ancient ocean-going log raft.
After the
museum visit, we took our bus back to the hotel where we originally caught the
boats for the Isla Corazon trip. There we had lunch, and the hotel
owner/operator was an Ecuadorian who had converted to the Hindu faith. As a
result, our meal was vegetarian, and we were served non-alcoholic beer and
fruit juice. But everything was wonderful—including a tofu stew which was
absolutely delicious. Later we learned that this hotel was chosen because it
was deemed “safe” in terms of cleanliness and the unlikely chance of customers
becoming sick from the food or drink.
After our
meal, we began our return bus journey to Manta—which was equally as
interesting. The whole excursion was about 8 hours and was time well spent.
Meanwhile,
Pat took about an hour bus ride to a village where Panama hats were made. While
most folks think that Panama hats are made in Panama, they are actually native
to Ecuador. On the way, the bus stopped at a fishing village, where men, women
and children prepared the boats to go out to fish for tuna and other species.
When we reached the village where Panama hats are made, Pat found it very
interesting to see that women, particularly, spent most of their time weaving
the hats. In order to produce them, women must bend over the hat in progress,
and push down on it. Needless to say, they can only do this for a few hours at
a time.
After the
hat demonstration, we moved on to the tagua button factory. Tagua is vegetable
ivory, produced from the nut of a palm tree.
These trees take several years to grow big enough to produce the nuts,
but once they are large enough, they can produce nuts for many years. The tagua
nut is soft at first, but hardens quickly and is used to produce buttons for
companies such as Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren. While these companies used
plastic buttons in the past, they have recently become more “ecologically”
minded, and now buy their buttons from Ecuador. Not only are buttons produced,
but also small figures are carved from the tagua nuts. Pat enjoyed finding
several souvenirs to bring home to our grandkids! The whole excursion was about
6 hours and most enjoyable.
Bill and Pat
met up at the pier in front of the ship upon Bill’s arrival from his excursion
(Pat’s excursion was shorter than Bill’s, and she arrived back first.) While at
the Panama hat village Pat received a telephone call from our daughter
Rhiannon, informing us that a tree had fallen on one of our rental houses
during a severe windstorm the night before! So after Bill heard this news, we
both boarded the ship and began dealing with the rental house issue with phone
calls and e-mails. (Some of you may remember that while on the 2012 cruise, a
tree fell on our property in Snohomish, which Matthew had to deal with.)
About 11:00 PM, our ship departed Manta,
Ecuador. We would continue heading south along the west coast of South America
for two complete sea days before arriving at our next port of call—Callao, Peru,
on Tuesday, January 14th. 
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