Manta, Ecuador

Another taxi trip. Young taxi driver, he spoke no English, so thanks to Roy, again, we negotiated a deal and off we went. We booked him for 4 hours at $20 an hour. We told him were we wanted to go and off we set. He also took us to a purpose build centre overlooking the city, it was dedicated to the history of Manta, which was very interesting to read, although it was all in Spanish we were able to get the gist of it.

From there we went to visit the Cathedral, and saw this local market, the guy with the 14 paddle is one of the ships tour guides, they paid twice as much as we did for the same trip, and were herded on and off a coach that was NOT air conditioned.

I bought a genuine Panama Hat.

From there he took us to a national park, and a guide took us through the park, explaining the different animals and plants that live there, we saw some 'howler' monkeys and tiny frogs, lots of different varieties of birds and flowers. The flowers in the picture are Heliconia (thanks Rose).

The picture of the 4 of us, we are having a rest halfway up the steep climb back to the entrance.

A brilliant shore day.