Oh, its hot.. And humid. Welcome to the equator (well almost). And its not going to get any better as we move north, that’s for sure. Oh well, we signed up for it. After breakfast (which takes far too long in Blu, but fortunately we have time), we watch the port officials and dock workers try to fashion a gangway out of scaffolding, empty shipping containers and ramps. Hmmm….this is interesting. We’ve actually docked an hour early, but disembarkation doesn’t begin until close to our scheduled 10am.
Today we are once again taking a Bill and Christy tour and dutifully meet at the Martini bar to check in. It’s a madhouse because this is also where the gangway is located, but after some milling around, we get organized into our groups, only to find out the line for disembarkation is seriously a mile long. Because of the structure of the gangway, the ship won’t let more than 10 or 20 people off at a time, and then they have to shut it down entirely for some reason. Thus the line. We are stretched entirely around the ship – from the gangway door all the way to the theater and back around past the mid ship elevators. This is ugly.
We spend the time standing in line, chatting with our other tour group members. Tatiana isn’t with us today, but Nigel and Sue are, and we strike up a conversation, discussing the tour and how our timing might affect it. As we keep talking it dawns on us that the tour we thought we are on is not the tour we are actually on! We thought we were going to a couple of museums, the panama hat factory and a cevicheteria for lunch. But Nigel is talking about the rainforest, and definitely not the hat factory, which he specifically didn’t want to do, and which starts a flurry of email research and printed tour overviews before we finally figure out we had wanted to do the museum tour, but it was full and chose this tour as our back up plan! Surprise! Oh, and we had to choose lunch options, which Ed has apparently done but we don’t have any recall of it. The menu isn’t ceviche, but it looks decent enough with empanadas, soup and mahi mahi. Hey, what the heck, it’s a tour in a new city for us, a good group of people and we’re game.
Unfortunately, though, the disembarkation is playing havoc with our schedule. We were supposed to meet our guide at 10:30, but it takes us almost an hour and a half to get off the ship, so we don’t end up with our guide or in our van until 11:30 or later, putting a crimp in our timeline. We meet our guide Frank at the tour counter and walk through the gorgeous brand new cruise terminal to meet our van. Once crammed inside (and yes, crammed we are in the very last row with the lady in front of us yelling for the A/C – something she will repeat at every stop), we start off on our tour to the rainforest.
As we drive to our first destination – a drive by of the fish market and shipyard – Frank introduces us to Manta – and to himself. Manta is the only beach community in Ecuador and the fastest growing city. It is young, only 96 years old and sustained by the Tuna industry and the secondly, the tourist industry. There are 12 different beaches in Manta, making it a destination for many local and international tourists. Frank, as it turns out, is quite the entrepreneur. He is a realtor, so he gives us all the spiel about so many ex-pats coming to live here, and how cheap it is to buy a condominium ($100K), how cheap it is to live here ($3-$4 for a pound of fresh caught fish) and how the taxes are low. And seeing as chocolate and coffee are huge industries here as well, it should not surprise us that he also represents a coffee producer and a chocolate producer – and has some of his chocolate with him for us to try. Quite the salesman, but hey, we’ll take the chocolate samples, which are both excellent.
After pointing out the new mall and some new commercial buildings we reach the fish market which is pretty big, but because we are so late, Frank says it isn’t worth stopping as all the activity is much earlier in the morning. The shipyard turns out to be ships in various stages of building and rebuilding sitting right alongside the road on the water’s edge. It looks totally haphazard, like there are just a bunch of ships that grounded there, but it is a live shipyard with work being done on a large ship at the beginning of the yard. After that, we are off into the mountains to visit the rainforest with a pitstop in San Lorenzo – one of the pretty beaches along the coast, and also where turtles come to hatch.
The drive through the mountains takes about 30 minutes, as we wind our way through little villages and up into tall hillsides covered in lush green foliage with occasional gashes of white limestone showing through (we are guessing those are rock slides that cut felled the trees and left an indelible mark on the hillside). Frank recounts a story about the town called El Aromo, or The Smell. The town got its name because the houses are all built of adobe, and the residents used donkey “poop” as part of the cement that held the adobe bricks together. It doesn’t smell now, supposedly, but we’ll never know as we drive through in our airconditioned van.
Climbing to the top elevation of 575m we find ourselves in the rain forest micro-climate, which has been turned into a National Research Forest and protected from development. You can own property up here, but the government controls what you do with it requiring 50% of the property to remain green and restricting the number of people who can live on the land, determined by the size of the property.
We drive past the entrance to the forest, and a trail head that Frank says would take 2 hours to trek – which of course we aren’t going to do. But he keeps talking about trekking, and where we will trek, which of course, not knowing we were on this tour, we had no idea we would be doing – but the A/C lady’s comment to Ed about another person being brave and wearing flip flops now makes sense. Oops. Hope we aren’t “trekking” on too many natural trails!
Driving out of the forest and back down to sea level, we are treated with stunning views up and down the coast. We pass a huge turtle statue and the San Lorenzo sign (where a Celebrity tour is exiting their bus to take pictures) and drive into San Lorenzo proper, which is a small little town with a sandy strip of asphalt along the seashore. It’s cool and ruddy in a shoddy sort of beach way. There is a little hotel right on the beach and lots of cafes and restaurants under palapas, and turtle nests up and down the beach. We end up going to one restaurant for a bathroom break, and afterward get a big beer to share while we chat with Frank and the others are wandering around the beach looking at turtle nests.
Next we drive back up into the hills to walk the Sendera El Faro, the lighthouse trail. On the way Nigel (who is a birdwatcher) spots owls on a tree on the side of the road. We couldn’t believe it – they are small, grey little creatures – and we all thought they were only nocturnal. Cool. As we get to the trailhead, Frank assures us we are only going halfway because we don’t have the time to make it all the way to the lighthouse and back – which is fine really, the views from the halfway point are spectacular – and quite frankly, most of our group wouldn’t make it the whole way (since about 1/3 don’t even come as far as the lookout point with us). The trail starts out fairly steeping with a long set of stairs, but the climb is worth it for the views looking north over the beautiful undeveloped Pacific Ocean coastline (where you can see the erosion that is taking its toll on the beaches). Climbing slightly more, then leveling off, we come across a ridge that gives us long views of San Lorenzo and the beach communities that dot the coast going south on side, and the lighthouse atop a craggy mountain on the other. There is an incredible breeze up here too – one I wouldn’t mind staying in for a while before returning, but because of our delay, we are sort of on a speed tour with not much time to rest. Of we go for our real rainforest trek.
Back in the van (with A/C lady yelling to turn it up), we retrace our steps from this morning, stopping at the entrance to the national park and the Sendero Pasaje del Mono trail. This is the monkey trail where not only will we see monkeys, we will also get lessons in the types of plants and trees here, as well as look for tarantulas. Yes, tarantulas. Hmm….didn’t really sign up for that one, but, when in Ecuador…..
We have an adorable naturalist guide named Carlos who has the greatest personality, and even though he speaks only a little English (so Frank translates), his passion and knowledge just shines through. He takes us down the trail stopping here and there to show us different trees and flowers. We smell a medicinal plant used for colds and fevers, then pick some cilantro (that looks just like the weeds in our flower beds!), then to the Tagua tree (fake ivory tree) for a demonstration of the nuts that are carved into different figurines. Carlos shows us the ripe nut (which is sort of like a fruit and you can eat it), then the harder nut that is peeled and carved, and finally a neat little carved elephant made from the nut. We have something like that at home from another trip, we think.
Finally it is time to go on a hunt for tarantulas. Carlos finds a tarantula hole and tries to coax the spider out by poking a little stick down the hole. We all look on expectantly – with a little horror thrown in – but nothing happens. Carlos thinks that the tarantula is sleeping because he’s come out a lot today (obviously for other groups before us). Moving on he explains the uses of the Bird of Paradise flower – for ointments, remedies, and of course for Carlos to play a hummingbird or Pinocchio by placing one of the long flower petals on his nose. Precious.
As the trail moves deeper into the forest, we begin to hear the monkeys baying in the distance. They are howler monkeys, thus the “howling” and they sound pretty fierce, but Carlos explains that is their territorial sound, the male monkeys protecting their harem, and as long as we stay back from them, all will be well. Nigel spots a bat hawk up in a tree, and then Frank walks across a poisonous snake! He is out front and suddenly Carlos yells, “Stop!” Frank freezes looking down, then Carlos yells, “go, go, go",’ which makes Frank run to the bridge ahead. Turns out there is a very poisonous Equis (x) snake on the side of the path. Carlos chases it out and across the path with a stick, and we see it has a baby tarantula in its fangs. Yikes! Then Carlos starts taking everyone’s phone to take pictures of the thing. Really? We’re all ready to run, and here he is shoving cameras at the snake. At least we got good photos of the thing!
After the snake scare, we wind our way down crudely constructed stairs to the monkey viewing area. We are only going halfway on the trail, but it is enough to see all the monkeys – and boy do we. They are really close to us on the trees, closer than Frank has ever seen them, actually. We all take turns coming down the stairs from the viewing platform to watch mothers and babies climbing all over, jumping from branch to branch, and playing around. Much more successful than our tiger safari!
Now comes the hard part, climbing back uphill to the van. It’s actually not that bad a climb, and can count for our afternoon exercise! There are various levels of moans and groans, but we all make it successfully to the van and head off to lunch. We arrive at Las Heliconias, a hostel and restaurant, fairly quickly and settle onto the upstairs balcony for at a series of long tables for lunch. We end up at the end of the table with Frank, so we “serve” everyone else by passing plates down the table. First the plantain cheese empanada, which is totally different and really good – mashed plantains forming the empanada “crust” over melted cheese. Next is chicken soup or creamy vegetable, which I pass on, because I simply can’t eat soup and then a meal, but which everyone likes (I did steal a piece of chicken out of Ed’s soup, and it was very tasty), then either chicken curry or Mahi Mahi with coconut sauce (we had the fish which was excellent) and for dessert, wet chocolate cake (which wasn’t exactly wet – but we found out later that the first set of cakes we passed down the table were doused in some sort of syrup and completely soaked, where as our cakes had icing and no syrup, but were still very good and filling). IN between the courses, we have a great conversation with Frank, learning about his family (his mom and sister live in Utah), his passion for surfing (he told us upfront that he was going to surf today, but changed his mind to take this tour) and chatting about his life, work and plans. He’s a pretty put together guy, and a thoroughly enjoyable lunch partner.
Stuffed to the gills, we take a bathroom break before climbing back into the van. As a group we’ve decided to pass on the Museum Eloy Alfaro, which is the president’s house. Frank has given us an explanation of it while we were eating, and while it sounds great, we wouldn’t have enough time to do it justice before heading back to the ship. So, instead, Frank takes us on a tour of one of the gated communities he represents (because he has the gate code!). The community still have plenty of lots available and there are plenty of condos and houses in various stages of development. It’s a lovely community on the waterfront, and it is fun to ride all around the little lanes as Frank expounds on the virtues of owning a place here (his company can broker the purchase, and then manage the rentals for you). If we had more time, he would have taken us through one of the units, but as it is, we need to hustle back to the terminal for all aboard.
Returning to the port, Frank takes us through another area of town where there are bars and restaurants and a Wyndham hotel and then we are back. We bid farewell to our surfer/entrepreneur guide, after snagging his business card, and head into the terminal to shop for Tagua earrings and little figurines.
Then its the shuttle and the ship, and a blissful shower, drinks with Nigel and Sue, dinner and then a show, which we left early to attend the equator crossing ceremony up on deck. The equator crossing ceremony is basically just a countdown to the crossing at 10:15, then the dancers perform, but we can’t really see them even when we stand up on the stack of lounge chairs where we were sitting. So, we head down to the cabin for a night cap and bed.
