Manta, Ecuador

As you can imagine, it was hot when we crossed the equator and travelled into Ecuadorian waters. (By the way, Ecuador is the Spanish word for equator.)



Our first stop was Manta, the tuna capital of South America. There was a large fleet of fishing vessels in the harbour where we docked our ship.


As well as fishing, Manta is also known for the ivory nut. These hard nuts are grown to make natural buttons (not plastic ones) that are used all over the world.



Here you can see some workers (99.99% women) slicing the nuts so that they can be cut into buttons. They get paid $200 USD for working 8 hours a day, 7 days a week with these dangerous buzz saws. Nuts that aren´t used for buttons are carved into cute souvenirs for the tourists.



We also visited a ´factory´(basically the basement of a house) where a family made sacks, bags and other woven materials from the agave plant.



They used the dried agave to make a variety of objects. After splitting the thick leaves, the strands were brushed, then waxed and then spun onto reels. The small reels were then strung onto one big reel that was put on a loom for weaving.



This is very labour intensive work and our guide made sure that we understood all the steps that it took to make a bag so that we wouldn´t haggle too harshly with the vendors. This really wasn´t necessary since the costs were extremely reasonable and most of the vendors were selling items that only cost $1 to $5 anyway. (Even cheapies like me bought a few items!)


Our last stop was the archaeological museum where we got to see some interesting ancient afrtifacts.