Ecuador

The museum was brand new and air conditioned. Lots of pre-Columbian artifacts but no mummies..... skulls and bones though. We only stayed about an hour!! The museum is in the former national bank building. Ecuador has converted to using the US Dollar as their national currency because inflation made theirs worthless. Somebody said they still use their coins though, probably for vending machines and small change. I don't know how they value them.

We drove all around Manta and out from town to a small local house where we were shown how paja toquilla is transformed into Panama Hats. Hats were there for sale but we settled on a picture of the hats instead. Jack did buy a bag of organic local coffee. It is suppose to be “award winning”. The coffee is called “El Aromo.”

The next little town we visited was El Aromo. We saw the church and wandered around the square and found the pharmacy but it was closed for siesta. I am completely out of drugs.

Half the passengers, or more, have a very persistent cough. Sudafed and Robitussin were controlling the symptoms. The ship is out, has been out since before Arica, and will not be restocked until we get to Long Beach. Bleeping ridiculous. Have they never heard of FedEx? I hope we can find something in Mexico in two days. I have been sick for five weeks.

Here we are on the equator in high summer and the temperature got up to 90 today. Moderate humidity, so it is really quite comfortable. This is still due to the influence of the Humboldt Current of cold water from down at Cape Horn. Inland a little, it does get very hot and they grow bananas.

Manta has a huge Tuna industry. A Chinese freezer ship was parked right across from us at the pier. They off loaded fish all day from the ships freezer to trucks. The trucks then proceeded in convoy to the processing plants, accompanied by masked armed guards on every truck The tour guide said the guards are not allowed to shoot first. Before I saw how many fish were transported in one day, I had no idea how many fish we kill daily...... and this is just one port.