MANTA FOR MIGRACIÓN; CELLULAR TELEPHONE: +593+8+548-2730
Friday, 02 June 2006
Leslie and Phillip of S/V Carina organize two taxis to take a party of us to Manta on Wednesday (yesterday. Since there are no immigration offices here in Bahia de Caráquez, after registering with the Capitania de Puerto here, we are required to travel to Manta, a large port about 60 miles away down the coast, to register. So far no one has ever mentioned clearing customs in Ecuador; maybe that’s part of what the Port Captain did but there were certainly no questions about what we might be importing – including the boat.)
The going rate around here, we were told by other boaters, is $30; the taxi is yours for the day and the driver will take you around Manta on any errands you have. For some reason these taxis, which had been ordered through Puerto Amistad, cost $35. We threw the numbers together and paid $10 a head since there were seven of us going (Leslie and Phillip, Hope and Rich from S/V Ceilidh and Susan from S/V Wooden Shoe. Hope and Rich are from Northern California and they have been sailing with Carina from Panama, arriving a few days later. Carina came in with us a week earlier. Susan is a concert cellist, originally from Michigan but latterly of San Diego. She has been in Bahia for a while.)
We piled into one car with Susan. The road to Manta leads through rolling countryside covered with lots of greenery. The topsoil, however, is very thin. Though we never actually glimpse the sea again after leaving Bahia until we reach Manta itself, we are driving the coast road and these hills are basically sand dunes created by the tectonic plates pushing eastwards from the Galapagos. There might be a little more topsoil in the narrow valleys but otherwise only a few inches. The valleys, however, are mostly cultivated. Maize seems to be the main crop, surprising to me since corn demands a fair amount of nutrients. We also saw plenty of banana and coconut groves and fields with melons. Coconuts and melons were being sold at stands along the way too.
The highway itself is a broad, two-lane affair but, at the end of the wet season, very potholed and badly in need of patching. Traffic is scant so the driver was continually swinging out into the opposite lane to avoid rough spots. Like the traffic bumps in the villages, these hindrances are viewed by drivers as an excellent spot to get the drop on slower vehicles, mainly trucks running in size up to dump trucks (no 18-wheelers): frequently there would be two or three yellow cabs strung out across the highway and endeavouring to get ahead of each other. It was like a Le Mans start each time. There is a fair amount of light tooting of horns but nobody gets steamed up.
Houses along the road are frequently raised platforms. This is especially so the closer we are to the water and may be a hand-me-down architecture for fishermen and coast dwellers. The platforms are generally plywood or lumber but sometimes concrete. The roof might be either palm fronds or corrugated metal. The walls are usually woven palm matting with a window or two and a door. A ladder, often rough-hewn, leads up to the veranda part of the platform; on one of them I saw a little girl of about two years climbing.
Below the house the land is cleared all around except for some palm trees or flowering shrubs like jacaranda or frangipani. (There is no hint of gardening or horticulture here, just stray plants. But there are lots of flowering bushes all along the way.) In the cleared areas you see pigs rubbing their sides against a tree or some farm implements. What I do not see are derelict cars, trucks or farm equipment. No rusted-out hulks. We actually see some people working in fields of what might have been melons. Basically hand and stoop labour.
The soft tarmac highway goes up and down through the sandy hills. Occasionally we come to a village. There are a few tiendas and some tiny outdoor workshops, in one I see a man squatting down doing some welding on the floor. The skies are cloudy but the day is, like every day, in the mid 20’s Celsius. Occasionally we see people sitting outside. In one town there is a large church on the slope overlooking the town and we stop to take a look inside on the way back from Manta. Nothing particularly striking except it is clearly of classical European design but modern wall paintings inside around the nave. An airy building and, like all the Roman Catholic churches we have seen here, in good condition. Not sure if they have been repaired following damage during the earthquake. The inevitable square in front of the church is also tidy and clean.
I am surprised to see so many evangelical churches in Bahia and Manta. American missionaries are very active throughout South America, including Ecuador: Pentecostals, Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovahs Witnesses, and Mormons. You see lots of storefront churches and, though we have not yet met any, long-term cruisers here say there are lots of missionaries here. No doubt their success is due on the one hand to the distance and perhaps distain of the RC clergy for the little guy. It might also have to do with Protestant Weltanschauung in the aspiring petite bourgeoisie as was also the case in post-renaissance Europe. It was, after all, the small craftsmen and merchants in towns like Frankfurt who were the most avid adherents of Martin Luther’s teachings. His ideas about the priesthood of the believers and the predestined-select dovetailed neatly with their sense of self-help and success in this world as harbingers of their access to heavenly bounty in the next. Burgeoning Latin America has parallels, surely, to Elizabethan England or post-Reformation Germany. The question is how it will all work out historically: will wealth be redistributed more equitably in Latin America? Will the disenfranchised be brought into the political process? Will repression and dictatorship be the norm? England was highly centralised but relatively tolerant of dissenters. Germany and Central Europe generally was not. It took centuries to break the power of aristocracies: even the history of 20th Century Europe with its 100 million dead can be read as a chapter of post-Reformation history. But I digress.
Traffic begins to thicken only slightly as we hit the outskirts of Manta. On our right is a large bay full of fishing boats. Manta, population about 160,000 and situated at the mouth of the Manta River, is Ecuador’s second largest port and a major a centre for shrimp fishing. In fact, it has been a fishing centre since Inca times. There are said to have been some 500 tuna boats here though I cannot say I saw that many. There is also a U.S. military base somewhere here, one of a chain being built in Ecuador. (I wonder why.) A mild stink hangs over the city, either of the mud flats with the tide out or just a general smell. After rural Bahia, there is also a pall of exhaust fumes here that is unpleasant. The street vistas are generally workaday and without any charm. This is a working city and not a tourist destination, I should reckon.
We drive first to Migración, one office in a collection of government offices in a busy commercial street. The uniformed policeman at the entrance to the compound directs us somewhat sullenly through his gatehouse, across a parking courtyard and up concrete stairs to the first floor of the rear building. There is a waiting room with three large and out-of-place but comfortable sofas. We are called in to a young and cheerful lady in uniform who processes our paperwork. She asks for our Zarpe (this question is becoming standard) but also accepts willingly that Canadian boats don’t have them. No problem. For $20 we each receive a 90-day visa. We hear from others that it is not difficult to renew these for another 90 days. (Still no question of customs clearances.) It is only at the end of the process that Susan observes with horror that I have visited Migración wearing shorts! Others have been sent back to Bahia because of this slight to official dignity.
While the other four cruisers start their processing, Susan and us leave to go to an auto parts store that Susan needs to visit. We then make several stops looking for teardrop anodes (sacrificial zincs) for our boat. The ones below the waterline are surely overdue for replacement and we shall do this when we go up on the grid in a month or two. But no luck! The only ones we see are for much larger fishing boats. The staff members in the shops are friendly and even walk us around to shops where we might be able to purchase them.
The next stop is a supermarket. A slice of the U.S.A. It is not huge but is immaculate and well-stocked. It is part of a small “mall”. I make a beeline for an internet café to check if we have any work: we are checking each day now since we have told our sources that we are available. God knows we could use the money!
We ask about a place where we can get almuerzos tipicos, the cheap set-lunches of Ecuador. We are directed to another modern little gaggle of buildings known the hill. There is a “Kentucky Fired Chicken” and an “American Deli”. We settle unwillingly on the second since there are no other eating possibilities but these two. We order the set lunch for $1.25. It is all right but nothing special. When the bill is presented the whole thing comes to nearly twelve dollars. We feel we have been duped since there is a blackboard announcing the almuerzos and the waiter told us it cost $1.25. After a lot of discussion with the waiter and the manager, we finally compromise, leaving a ten-dollar bill on the table and walking out.
We load the groceries in the boot of the taxi. Pablo, our driver, stands the whole time near the car and keeps an eye out for out comings and goings. Susan is sailing to The Galapagos soon with five of her family coming in from the States so she has plenty. Our few bags seem paltry by comparison. Certainly, however, the prices here in Manta are much cheaper than in Bahia and we pay for the trip in part by our savings. We might have saved even more had we had any more cash.
On the way out of town we stop at another (covered) shopping mall. This is even more American than the last one: wandering up and down inside we see everything from ACE Hardware to Payless Shoes. Our immediate goal is ACE Hardware where we hope to be able to buy gallon jugs of mineral spirits. We use mineral spirits wherever we can get them in our petroleum lamps. It burns cleaner and is a lot cheaper than kerosene. They don’t seem to carry it here as they did in La Paz. Soon we are back in the car and on our way back to Bahia, glad to be away from the stink and bustle of the city.
Cellular telephone: +593+8+548-2730
Not really sure whether being attached by an electronic umbilical cord is a good thing or not, we once have a cellular telephone. Certainly this will be good to have for work (proofreading and translating) since agencies like need to know quickly if you can do the job so they can negotiate with their clients. Since none of the various older phones we seem to have collected over the years work here, we actually bought a cellphone, the cheapest one they had, for $40. It came with $3 worth of minutes, uses prepaid cards and is cost-free for incoming calls, even international ones. The phone will also handle text messages.
So here is the number:
+593 (Ecuador) + 8 (Bahia code) + 548-2730.
Friday, 02 June 2006
Leslie and Phillip of S/V Carina organize two taxis to take a party of us to Manta on Wednesday (yesterday. Since there are no immigration offices here in Bahia de Caráquez, after registering with the Capitania de Puerto here, we are required to travel to Manta, a large port about 60 miles away down the coast, to register. So far no one has ever mentioned clearing customs in Ecuador; maybe that’s part of what the Port Captain did but there were certainly no questions about what we might be importing – including the boat.)
The going rate around here, we were told by other boaters, is $30; the taxi is yours for the day and the driver will take you around Manta on any errands you have. For some reason these taxis, which had been ordered through Puerto Amistad, cost $35. We threw the numbers together and paid $10 a head since there were seven of us going (Leslie and Phillip, Hope and Rich from S/V Ceilidh and Susan from S/V Wooden Shoe. Hope and Rich are from Northern California and they have been sailing with Carina from Panama, arriving a few days later. Carina came in with us a week earlier. Susan is a concert cellist, originally from Michigan but latterly of San Diego. She has been in Bahia for a while.)
We piled into one car with Susan. The road to Manta leads through rolling countryside covered with lots of greenery. The topsoil, however, is very thin. Though we never actually glimpse the sea again after leaving Bahia until we reach Manta itself, we are driving the coast road and these hills are basically sand dunes created by the tectonic plates pushing eastwards from the Galapagos. There might be a little more topsoil in the narrow valleys but otherwise only a few inches. The valleys, however, are mostly cultivated. Maize seems to be the main crop, surprising to me since corn demands a fair amount of nutrients. We also saw plenty of banana and coconut groves and fields with melons. Coconuts and melons were being sold at stands along the way too.
The highway itself is a broad, two-lane affair but, at the end of the wet season, very potholed and badly in need of patching. Traffic is scant so the driver was continually swinging out into the opposite lane to avoid rough spots. Like the traffic bumps in the villages, these hindrances are viewed by drivers as an excellent spot to get the drop on slower vehicles, mainly trucks running in size up to dump trucks (no 18-wheelers): frequently there would be two or three yellow cabs strung out across the highway and endeavouring to get ahead of each other. It was like a Le Mans start each time. There is a fair amount of light tooting of horns but nobody gets steamed up.
Houses along the road are frequently raised platforms. This is especially so the closer we are to the water and may be a hand-me-down architecture for fishermen and coast dwellers. The platforms are generally plywood or lumber but sometimes concrete. The roof might be either palm fronds or corrugated metal. The walls are usually woven palm matting with a window or two and a door. A ladder, often rough-hewn, leads up to the veranda part of the platform; on one of them I saw a little girl of about two years climbing.
Below the house the land is cleared all around except for some palm trees or flowering shrubs like jacaranda or frangipani. (There is no hint of gardening or horticulture here, just stray plants. But there are lots of flowering bushes all along the way.) In the cleared areas you see pigs rubbing their sides against a tree or some farm implements. What I do not see are derelict cars, trucks or farm equipment. No rusted-out hulks. We actually see some people working in fields of what might have been melons. Basically hand and stoop labour.
The soft tarmac highway goes up and down through the sandy hills. Occasionally we come to a village. There are a few tiendas and some tiny outdoor workshops, in one I see a man squatting down doing some welding on the floor. The skies are cloudy but the day is, like every day, in the mid 20’s Celsius. Occasionally we see people sitting outside. In one town there is a large church on the slope overlooking the town and we stop to take a look inside on the way back from Manta. Nothing particularly striking except it is clearly of classical European design but modern wall paintings inside around the nave. An airy building and, like all the Roman Catholic churches we have seen here, in good condition. Not sure if they have been repaired following damage during the earthquake. The inevitable square in front of the church is also tidy and clean.
I am surprised to see so many evangelical churches in Bahia and Manta. American missionaries are very active throughout South America, including Ecuador: Pentecostals, Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovahs Witnesses, and Mormons. You see lots of storefront churches and, though we have not yet met any, long-term cruisers here say there are lots of missionaries here. No doubt their success is due on the one hand to the distance and perhaps distain of the RC clergy for the little guy. It might also have to do with Protestant Weltanschauung in the aspiring petite bourgeoisie as was also the case in post-renaissance Europe. It was, after all, the small craftsmen and merchants in towns like Frankfurt who were the most avid adherents of Martin Luther’s teachings. His ideas about the priesthood of the believers and the predestined-select dovetailed neatly with their sense of self-help and success in this world as harbingers of their access to heavenly bounty in the next. Burgeoning Latin America has parallels, surely, to Elizabethan England or post-Reformation Germany. The question is how it will all work out historically: will wealth be redistributed more equitably in Latin America? Will the disenfranchised be brought into the political process? Will repression and dictatorship be the norm? England was highly centralised but relatively tolerant of dissenters. Germany and Central Europe generally was not. It took centuries to break the power of aristocracies: even the history of 20th Century Europe with its 100 million dead can be read as a chapter of post-Reformation history. But I digress.
Traffic begins to thicken only slightly as we hit the outskirts of Manta. On our right is a large bay full of fishing boats. Manta, population about 160,000 and situated at the mouth of the Manta River, is Ecuador’s second largest port and a major a centre for shrimp fishing. In fact, it has been a fishing centre since Inca times. There are said to have been some 500 tuna boats here though I cannot say I saw that many. There is also a U.S. military base somewhere here, one of a chain being built in Ecuador. (I wonder why.) A mild stink hangs over the city, either of the mud flats with the tide out or just a general smell. After rural Bahia, there is also a pall of exhaust fumes here that is unpleasant. The street vistas are generally workaday and without any charm. This is a working city and not a tourist destination, I should reckon.
We drive first to Migración, one office in a collection of government offices in a busy commercial street. The uniformed policeman at the entrance to the compound directs us somewhat sullenly through his gatehouse, across a parking courtyard and up concrete stairs to the first floor of the rear building. There is a waiting room with three large and out-of-place but comfortable sofas. We are called in to a young and cheerful lady in uniform who processes our paperwork. She asks for our Zarpe (this question is becoming standard) but also accepts willingly that Canadian boats don’t have them. No problem. For $20 we each receive a 90-day visa. We hear from others that it is not difficult to renew these for another 90 days. (Still no question of customs clearances.) It is only at the end of the process that Susan observes with horror that I have visited Migración wearing shorts! Others have been sent back to Bahia because of this slight to official dignity.
While the other four cruisers start their processing, Susan and us leave to go to an auto parts store that Susan needs to visit. We then make several stops looking for teardrop anodes (sacrificial zincs) for our boat. The ones below the waterline are surely overdue for replacement and we shall do this when we go up on the grid in a month or two. But no luck! The only ones we see are for much larger fishing boats. The staff members in the shops are friendly and even walk us around to shops where we might be able to purchase them.
The next stop is a supermarket. A slice of the U.S.A. It is not huge but is immaculate and well-stocked. It is part of a small “mall”. I make a beeline for an internet café to check if we have any work: we are checking each day now since we have told our sources that we are available. God knows we could use the money!
We ask about a place where we can get almuerzos tipicos, the cheap set-lunches of Ecuador. We are directed to another modern little gaggle of buildings known the hill. There is a “Kentucky Fired Chicken” and an “American Deli”. We settle unwillingly on the second since there are no other eating possibilities but these two. We order the set lunch for $1.25. It is all right but nothing special. When the bill is presented the whole thing comes to nearly twelve dollars. We feel we have been duped since there is a blackboard announcing the almuerzos and the waiter told us it cost $1.25. After a lot of discussion with the waiter and the manager, we finally compromise, leaving a ten-dollar bill on the table and walking out.
We load the groceries in the boot of the taxi. Pablo, our driver, stands the whole time near the car and keeps an eye out for out comings and goings. Susan is sailing to The Galapagos soon with five of her family coming in from the States so she has plenty. Our few bags seem paltry by comparison. Certainly, however, the prices here in Manta are much cheaper than in Bahia and we pay for the trip in part by our savings. We might have saved even more had we had any more cash.
On the way out of town we stop at another (covered) shopping mall. This is even more American than the last one: wandering up and down inside we see everything from ACE Hardware to Payless Shoes. Our immediate goal is ACE Hardware where we hope to be able to buy gallon jugs of mineral spirits. We use mineral spirits wherever we can get them in our petroleum lamps. It burns cleaner and is a lot cheaper than kerosene. They don’t seem to carry it here as they did in La Paz. Soon we are back in the car and on our way back to Bahia, glad to be away from the stink and bustle of the city.
Cellular telephone: +593+8+548-2730
Not really sure whether being attached by an electronic umbilical cord is a good thing or not, we once have a cellular telephone. Certainly this will be good to have for work (proofreading and translating) since agencies like need to know quickly if you can do the job so they can negotiate with their clients. Since none of the various older phones we seem to have collected over the years work here, we actually bought a cellphone, the cheapest one they had, for $40. It came with $3 worth of minutes, uses prepaid cards and is cost-free for incoming calls, even international ones. The phone will also handle text messages.
So here is the number:
+593 (Ecuador) + 8 (Bahia code) + 548-2730.
posted by rjb @ Friday, June 02, 2006
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