From: "Kenwood Geigel" <kenwood.geigel@gmail.com>
To: "sarameansc" <sarameansc@aol.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 26, 2011 1:13:43 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Muddy, Murky Manta
(MaryAnn and John Darcy, this entry is dedicated to you because it might remind you of another port we visited on the 2010 World Cruise--Chuuk! By the way, Princess Cruises has dropped that port from it's itineraries because of the bad reviews the company received and potential danger to passengers.)
On only our second port, Sara realized she made a major mistake. Because Manta was named as the port for Quito, one of the best preserved cities in South America that boasts superb Baroque architecture and was designated a world heritage site in 1978 by UNESCO, she assumed that we could take a ship or self-guided tour of Quito. Never assume anything without reading the description of tours offered by the ship on Princess' website. Quito is 390 miles and an airplane ride away from Manta. When we got on board the Pacific Princess, we learned that the all-day trip to Quito had sold-out even before the ship had sailed.
So that left us to tour Manta. Richard, our destination lecturer, started his port talk with this quotation from a travel book, "Glum and scary with abject poverty and amazing unemployment. The streets are full of dirty, aggressive beggars." Before we could decide to not get off the ship, he reminded us that the reason we came on this trip is to experience different cultures. We do not have to stay and live in Manta.
Manta is a tuna fish port that cans tuna for Bumblebee and Starkist in addition to growing bananas for Chitiqua. When we woke up this morning, it was raining, which was not a good omen. We think it rained only twice on the 2010 world cruise. Our ship's tour, titled Montecristi & Archaeological Museum took us through a dreary countryside that reminded us of the 3 1/2-hour journey to Hanoi in Vietnam.
Our first stop in Montecristi was a church, but not one that was filled with gold like those in Quito. This church was built in either the 1950s or 1628, depending on which of our two tour guides we believed. (Another bad sign.) One of our fellow travelers commented that he had spent more time in churches on vacation than he did when he was home. The most interesting aspect of the church was the man standing on the scaffolding who was painting the huge wall with a small brush. Another man pushed the scaffolding along the wall. (OSHA inspectors would have a coronary!)
Outside the church, Moe, our second tour guide, helped Ken bargain for a Panama hat in a box for $25. Panama hats are actually woven in Montecristi, Ecuador. During the gold rush in 1849, a hat maker had too many hats so he set up shop in Panama to sell them. When the miners reached California and were asked where they got their hats, they answered Panama and the name stuck. Teddy Roosevelt, who wore the hat when he visited Panama while the canal was being built, and Harry Truman, who was often photographed wearing one, contributed to the popularity of the hats. The vendors in the street market were not as aggressive as those in Egypt or India, but they still got in your face like flies.
On the way to the museum, the bus driver drove by the tuna packing factories and the shipyards along the coast. Workers were building ships that took up to a one and one-half years to complete because all the work is done by hand. Every morning, small boats provide fish from the big boats to the fish market on the beach. Sharks are plentiful when this happens so the fishermen capture them. The shark fins are exported to Asia for $500 a piece. The average salary in this area is $260 a month for working six days a week. But gas is only $1.30 a gallon.
The Museo Centro Cultural Manta is housed on the fourth floor of a bank building. There we learned these fascinating facts about Manta:
* One of the biggest holidays in Ecuador is Dia de Difuntas or Day the the Dead on November 2. On this day, the residents pay respect to their loved ones by putting food on their graves in the cemeteries, playing cards and partying.
* Manta's Las Vegas culture in 9,000 B.C. predated the Inca culture.
* Both men and women in the early cultures pierced various parts of their bodies.
* Around the time of Christ, Manta natives were the first to mix gold and silver in jewelry so they were trendsetters.
* The Mantans used rafts that held up to 25 tons to travel to Chile and to Mexico where they found the Conchas Sponaylus shells off the west coast that they used to predict the weather.
* Many of the museum's artifacts were found in 1998 during the big El Nino.
and * The museum was worth much more time than the one-half hour tour that we were allotted.
The bus driver then drove through the Rain Forest, where considerable construction of casinos and homes was occurring. Our guide predicted that in the next 10 years, this area would be a Las Vegas want-to-be. Unfortunately, the landscape of the Rain Forest was covered with very dry, bleak branches with few or no leaves because there had been very little rain.
We then stopped at a family-owned business that wove Panama hats. The entire process from leaves to hats takes up to 100 days. Ken bought another hat, and we did not have the heart to tell him that the hats sold there were probably not made there. One of the other travelers asked me if Ken still believed in Santa Claus.
Our last stop was to take photographs of the Kapoc trees, which are famous for the buttons made from them and the leaves that are used to stuff pillows, mattresses and one-use-only life vests for the soldiers in World War II. The stuffing felt and looked like cotton.
When completed, we agreed that while the tour was worth the money, we did not plan to sell our house in Florida and move to Manta.
Tomorrow, we will witness the Symbolic Crossing the Equator Ceremony. We really crossed it early this morning but no one was awake to experience it. You can expect the entry about the ceremony on Thursday.
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