Ecuador

After a fantastic sunset the night before, we arrived early into the port of Manta which is in Ecuador. It was hot and steamy, hardly surprising as we are almost bang on the equator!

We had booked a tour as the town is very small. The tour was not the best we’ve had. It started badly with a very, very old coach. Seats were missing or falling apart, there was no air conditioning and all the windows were locked shut. Somehow the old coach made it up a hill to a small shack in the forest that made panama hats. Now you are thinking that panama hats originate from Panama…wrong, they come from Ecuador made for the workers of the Panama Canal! It was all very interesting.

We then went to a small fishing village but the locals hadn’t caught any fish overnight……but the coach was changed for one built in this century. However the guide forgot that people might not realise the coach change and therefore we set off minus passengers. A few miles down the road we had to turn around to go back for them!

This is an incredibly poor country and seeing the state of some of the places where people have to live reminds us how lucky we are.

We returned to the ship and next to us was a factory ship off-loading its haul of fish. It was sad to see all these fish being dumped in what can best be described as a garbage van to be processed and become Mcdonald’s filet of fish.