Manta (Not the Rays)

Day 1 – Stop Over

It was finally time to leave our Christmas retreat and get back to this travelling marlarky!  So, after packing up we were picked up by a taxi  (the only option as buses weren’t running) at 11 to take us to the town of Manta.

The journey took around an hour and a half and was pretty pleasant as it followed the coast so we got to see some nice scenery along the way.  Approaching Manta, we had a slight detour as the driver had been told we wanted to go to the airport, after a quick conversation we were then heading to our hostel.

Once the driver had located our hostel we had to wait for a short while whilst our room was made ready.  Our room was fairly nice and looked out onto a small swimming pool, we had booked this as we knew we had to wait around for our flight the next day.

We unpacked and had been told that the only places that would be open for food and drinks would be next to the main beach so we decided to make our way there to get some food.  Only problem being the receptionist was nowhere to be seen to order a taxi so after hanging round in reception for 20 minutes we managed to find the button to release the front gate (very secure in Ecuador!), so we could walk to the beach instead.

 

 

The walk was about a mile but it was blisteringly hot so we kept to the shade as much as possible until we reached the beach.  It was pretty busy there with locals as it was a Sunday and the next day was a public holiday.

The beach was pretty big and seemed quite nice and after a quick stroll we found a beach restaurant to get some lunch.  Shell had some more ceviche (not as nice as Ayampe’s) and I  just had something plane as I was not feeling great due to the effect of a slight cold.

 

 

After lunch, we went for a wander around, there was some street entertainment going on which seemed to be a comedy routine involving a transvestite and a dwarf.  It seemed to be entertaining but we had no idea what was going on so we walked on for a bit.

As it was very hot and I wasn’t feeling great we found a restaurant where we got some shade and some drinks.  For the rest of the afternoon and early evening we stayed at the restaurant people watched, which was quite entertaining.

Not having read great things about Manta we were pleasantly surprised that it seemed quite a nice city with a fairly nice beach.  We had only decided to stop over here so we could catch a flight from here to Quito instead of yet another gruelling coach journey, also it would have been an overnighter which isn’t recommended in Ecuador.

 

 

We found one last bar for a couple more drinks until we were the last people sat there and the staff were cleaning up around us, so we headed back to the main road where we caught a taxi back to our hostel for the night.