Manta, Ecuador
I'm back from Manta, so I'm going to write about that for now and catch up with my Catch Up post later.
So, Manta. It was a trip that most of the AIESEC members in Ecuador were making, with the purpose of having a bunch of conferences and switching the national committee and stuff like that. So most of the work was for the Ecuadorians, while us interns would pretty much just hang out. Me and Pria, a Canadian intern here in Loja, decided to take off a day early to have some more time to see the city and the beach and stuff. We began our trip Tuesday night at midnight via bus, first an 8 hour ride to Guayaquil, then a 4 hour one to Manta.
This is the paragraph where I complain about the buses. The buses here are crazy. I already explained Ecuadorian driving and road conditions in a previous post, so take that and apply it to a big old bus full of like 30 people, with no bathroom, for huge periods of time. It's super difficult to sleep with all the falling apart roads, deadly driving, and people randomly coming on and off the bus trying to sell you stuff. But it's super cheap; I think my 12 hour trip cost me like $13 or something. And my bus experiences could have been worse, a fellow US intern had to sit next to a guy with a chicken on his trip from Qutio to Manta. I guess you eventually get used to everything (as long as you don't have a sudden gringo diahrrea attack).
Oh and by the way, here's something to give you an idea of the roads here. If my geography is right, and it is currently unaided by Google Maps so this is just word of mouth, Ecuador is smaller than the state of Nevada. However, driving about half way up it took 12 hours, while driving from Vegas to Reno takes like, what, 7 hours? So yeah, even if my numbers are way off, you get the point.
And before I get too far into this, let me explain Manta. Manta is a smallish town on the coast in the province of Manabí, close to the center of the country latitude wise. Most of the people there survive on the fishing industry, though it does have a decent amount of tourism going on as well. Almost all the tourists are Ecuadorian though I think, because I only saw one two other foreigners there (besides AIESEC interns), and they were your typical gringo backpackers. It also used to have a US military base on the North side of town, but Rafael Correa, el presidente, made all the troops leave just a few months ago for whatever reason. The terrain around Manta is manglar, which wordreference.com told me earlier today translates to mangrove forest, but I don't know how accurate that is. Anyway, it's much more dry and hot than Loja, and the forest is really thick dry shrubs like 3 meters tall (I'm trying to get more used to metrics here), dotted with these big green barked trees that are pretty crazy. But the terrain changes so quickly here wherever you go, only about 40 minutes out of town is also damper bamboo forest and stuff.
Ok we arrived in Manta at around 1pm, took a taxi to Tarqui (the more fish oriented part of town), and went cheap hotel room shopping. We eventually settled with Hostal Playita Mia at $10 a night split between the two of us. Then we went exploring, heading more into town instead of to the beach at first because our taxi driver told us that the beach in Tarqui was contaminated. The market was pretty cool, lots of fruit and fish and stuff. We ironically ended up eating at a Chinese restaurant in the market, and it was not bad, I was starving. Then we grabbed a taxi and went to the other beach, La Playa Murciélago, which the driver assured me was not contaminated like the one by our hotel. He was right, it was a really nice beach, with calm waves, not a lot of people, and perfect temperature water. We even managed to get a guy at a tourist info place nearby to agree to give us a tour of Manta the next day for only $10, using his car, for like 5 hours. This was mostly due to Pria's amazing haggling skills. She speaks very little Spanish, but she was taking people for all they were worth the whole trip with her story about how we were just poor "estudiantes" on "intercambio". I was taking notes the whole time, I am the biggest target for getting ripped off because I look like such a gringo and I can't argue with people to save my life. But anyways, we then made our way back to the hostal on foot, getting a good feel for Manta on the way and seeing some more marketish type places on our way. We took another taxi to the mall that night to get some chow and see a movie. We saw A Night at the Museum 2, which lucky for us was in English and just had Spanish subtitles. We then called it a night and took a taxi back to the hostal to get some much needed sleep after spending the previous night travelling. The $10 hostal beds felt great.
The next day the other AIESEC people were coming in the afternoon, so we had to get in some last cool stuff on our own before we had a more strict schedule. We grabbed breakfast at a panadería in the market and went back to our hostal to meet our tour guide from the day before. He was surprisingly only about 5 minutes late, making him one of the most punctual Ecuadorians I've met so far. He started off our tour by showing us the north side of town and the old US military base that I mentioned before. Then we went back to la playa Tarqui and found out why it was contaminated. Tarqui is where all the fish business happens, including a huge fish market and a shipyard, as in big wooden ships being built, all right there on the beach. It's also where all the fishermen unload their day's catch, so the beach is filled with people cleaning fish and trucks driving to pick up the fish. There were crazy different kinds of fish too, I saw a few rays, and even one shark being hacked up by a guy on the beach. Another guy was carrying a big bucket of fish from a boat to a truck, and every time he got a load he had to run as fast as he could to the truck while these big birds dove down and tried to take fish out of the bucket. It was really cool, just seeing this small local community in action was awesome.
Continuing on our tour, we checked out a few churches, which always seem to be some of the nicest buildings in their given neighborhoods in Ecuador. One had a plane crash into it a few years back, and it even took alot of the surrounding neighborhood out as well. But it was all rebuilt now.
We got lunch back near the fish market, at a restaurant on the beach. It was pretty good seafood, mine was some kind of fish that was fried whole and still had its eyeballs and all. And we were only interrupted a few times by guys trying to sell us bootleg dvds and hats and stuff.
We negotiated with our tour guide to extend our tour to Montecristi, a small town about 15 minutes away that we kept hearing a lot about. After seeing the university in Manta, including the electrical engineering deptartment, and meeting a tourism professor because our tour guide seemed to know everyone in town, we headed to Montecristi. We passed a Starkist tuna packaging place and a coffee packaging factory, and stopped at the museum that overlooks the town. We didn't go all the way in, we only saw a big statue of some general from back when the local region was fighting for independence from Spain, but the view of the town was really cool and I got some good pictures. We then headed down into town where there was a whole bunch of shops selling hats and tons of things made from hat-like material. One shop owner turned out to be a kind of coin collector and was super syked when accidentally given a Canadian quarter by Pria.
Adding to our tour amendments, we then told the guy to take us to our new hotel, where we were to be meeting the other AIESEC people in a few hours. It was a good fourty minutes away, to the south of town, but he was more than happy to take us as long as we payed. The hotel ended up being a hotel/farm in the middle of a manglar with no civilization (or beach) that close nearby, but when we arrived it looked pretty nice so we weren't exactly upset after our last hotel. However, after the dude dropped us off, we went to check in to the hotel but were told that the AIESEC reservation was for Saturday. And it was Thursday. After battling to find service outside the hotel since its phones had been disconnected, we were able to make a few phone calls and determine that we were actually staying at this hotel only on Saturday as the guy had told us, and we had a different hotel that was actually in Manta for the next two nights. Typical result of gringos trying to plan things in advance in Ecuador.
We found ourselves unable to call a taxi for whatever reason, so with the help of a really nice guy at the front desk we set out for the bus stop. Which actually didn't seem that bad, since we were told a taxi from there to Manta would cost $10 while the bus only costs 50 cents. While waiting near the highway for the bus to arrive at some unknown time, a truck jammed with people stopped as it was leaving the hotel farm and asked us if we wanted a ride to Manta. We accepted (sorry Mom), and it actually turned out to be a pretty lucky deal. We got to sit in the cab and not in the bed, two of the guys turned out to be the owner and son, and the son had lived in the US a while a spoke English. They dropped us off at our hotel for free, and we were relieved to find some AIESEC people there meaning that we were at the right place.
A really nice AIESEC Manta guy named Freddy, who ended up being like our local Manta friend and going everywhere with us for the rest of the trip, took us around near the hotel and back down to Murciélago. We ran into our AIESEC Loja crew randomly on the beach there, and then we all went back to the hotel. I met a whole bunch of really cool people here: AIESECers from all over the country and interns from all over the world, and just about all of them kept offering for us to come visit them in there respective Ecuadorian city or other country, so I now have all kinds of friends that owe me a bed and a tour. There were interns from the Colombia, Costa Rica, The Dominican Republic, Canada, the US, Holland, Russia, and Finland, if I remember them all. Crazy. That night we went down to the beach for a beach party, which was pretty cool because there wasn't hardly anyone else around and we had a fire and speakers all.
The next day and for most of the trip all of the official AIESEC people were in conferences, so all the foreign interns pretty much just hung out together. Me, Pria, and Sam (a Loja intern from the University of Colorado at Boulder) took the long walk down to the beach that morning, with towels, sunglasses, sunscreen and everything, looking like the most blatantly obvious tourist gringos that Manta had ever seen. But we only got yelled at once, and the beach was fun, I got to full out swim this time. Freddy ended up popping up out of nowhere and hanging out with us too. And to add to my gringo appearance, I got pretty decently sunburnt. I don't even know what was up with that, I was without a shirt for like 1 hour, and I used sunscreen. But anyways, after that we chilled at the hotel until there was another party that night, but at the hotel this time. The conference stuff took forever though, and I ended up calling it a night at around 1, abandoning the hors d'oeuvres (yeah, I had to look up how to spell that word) that I had been waiting for them to serve all night.
I was up around 8 the next morning, along with everyone else, though the music from the party didn't stop until 5am the night before. Those Ecuadorian AIESECers are beasts, they're working this whole time too with all the conferences they have to go to. Us interns all headed to our special hotel that morning, the one I had already visited on accident. First we checked out the animals they had there, including a bunch of birds, some monkeys, and ostriches. A few people went horseback riding too, but I was too busy getting whooped up on at soccer by some Ecuadorians at the time. Later I had to miss a short beach trip due to my sunburns, but I used the time to catch up on some sleep, take some more pictures, and hang out in a hammock, so it wasn't too heart breaking. That night we went back to the old hotel for yet another party, and a new Loja intern from the US named Demetri even showed up, straight from his arrival in Quito. Me and Sam made sure to show him the ropes in Ecuador, such as what chévere means and how there are musical garbage trucks. After the party, we rode a bus back to the special intern farm hotel. When I was just about to get into bed, I noticed a massive spider, as in just short of being tarantual size, chilling right next to my pillow. Sam's attempt at killing it with a towel didn't work and it got away, so I changed beds and tried not to think about it as I went to sleep.
The next day was the day we had to leave, but we took one last trip to the beach before we left. This one was near the hotel, but not the one they had seen the day before and not Murciélago from back in Manta. The Costa Rica intern had some 100 SPF sunscreen that he let me use, and if that stuff isn't illegal in the US then I need some when I get back. The beach was cool, there were all kinds of kite surfers and I got more good pictures. We then headed back to the original hotel, and all the Loja/Guayaquil interns decided to sneak out early IN ORDER TO MAKE IT TO WORK ON TIME IN THE MORNING. Yeah, remember it's a 12 hour bus ride. We grabbed a few Loja AIESECers who wanted out early and after saying bye to all our awesome new friends, we went to the terminal to start our voyage home.
The bus ride was about the same this time around. We arrived in Loja at 6am, just enough time for me to run home and grab a few minutes of sleep before I had to be at work at 8:30. Other than that, the trip was great, and now I feel a lot more confident about getting around Ecuador on my own. We're trying to plan a weekend trip to Cuenca soon, that would be pretty awesome especially because the bus ride is much shorter. But in the mean time I'll try and post that Catch Up Part 2 post, and then I'll be all caught up to start writing things in order.
And lastly, yes, I've been having an awesome time in Ecuador so far. Several times since I've been here now I've had to check myself and just be like, "Ok, I'm in Ecuador now, in the rain forest/beach/mountains, speaking Spanish with people from all over the world. At this time a few months ago, I would have been barracaded in the basement of a library with a foot of snow on the ground outside, not having eaten, slept, or seen the sun or a girl in waay too long." Ok maybe it's not that drastic, but life in Ecuador is great.