Port of Manta Ecuador?

[Addictedtwo]

I have searched high and low on the net for port info/address in order to see how far the beach Playa Murcielago is from the pier.

 

Does anyone know approx how far from pier to beach and are there any "must sees" in Manta? We are in port from 9 am to 6 pm.

 

I know that it's an industrial port so I'm not expecting much. Thanks

[dfb]

how far the beach Playa Murcielago is from the pier.

 

Does anyone know approx how far from pier to beach and are there any "must sees" in Manta?

 

You know I am not sure but from my memories of seeing surfers right across the pier from where we docked and looking at online maps, it may be right there... across the pier. Check out

http://www.frommers.com/images/destinations/maps/jpg-2006/3890_mantaattractions.jpg

http://maps.google.com/ enter Manta, Ecuador and close in on that pier, then you can look at photos and some are captioned, Murcielago.

 

We took a private tour that day and our guide did point out that beach as we were driving off the pier and tell us a story about surfing, but I do not recall what name she said.

 

We had private car/driver and English-speaking guide here through Metropolitan Touring Manta. (operaciones@metromanabi.com) We had options through the Ship's Travel Concierge for a couple of hours tours to Montecristi or else 10-11 hours or so tours involving flights to Quito and the Highlands. We really didn't like any of those options. We chose a more local, yet away from port option here. We went with Metropolitan Touring's Machalilla National Park Tour. Our cost was $85 pp for 7:30am to 5pm and included lunch and entry fees. Our driver was Carlos, our Manta guide was Veronica who was a Manta native and our Machalilla guide was Alegria (which means Joy) and she was born in Guayaquil and has lived in Puerto Lopez for over a decade. the tour description was:

"MACHALILLA NATIONAL PARK - Visit Montecristi where the finest “Panama Hats” are made, drive over the coastal range to Puerto Lopez and enjoy the journey to the Salango Archaeological Museum, where there is an exhibit of the life of the “Balseros de la mar del Sur” (ferrymen of the Southern Sea), honoring the navigators and merchants of the pre-Hispanic Ecuador. The museum also gather history from the times of the Valdivia culture up to Manteña, which mends more than 5,000 years of permanent occupation of this region. After a hearty lunch at Alandaluz restaurant, visit the lovely Piqueros Beach before heading back to Manta."

 

We kept a blog and here is a link for that day with photos. (BUT, AOL is shutting down their journals so this link is only good through 10/31/08! Sorry!)

http://journals.aol.com/dfriia/circle-south-america-2008-aboard/entries/2008/01/13/day-9-jan-12---manta-ecuador/1751

 

Debbie

[Addictedtwo]

dfb thanks I downloaded that 1st map but couldn't locate the pier or beach and then I had tried google maps. But wasn't successful. I have done what you said with google and have a better picture.

 

As for the beach, from what I have been reading I think there are 2 beaches near the pier either way they are not far.

 

As for your info on your tour, I had read that earlier today, I had gone back many many pages and when I started reading it I thought it sounded familiar, so you must have cut & pasted good idea!

[Jaalice]

Thank you for your information. We will be visiting Manta in Nov on the Radiance of the Seas. Your private tour sound like one we would enjoy. Does the company you used have a web site? I noticed you gave an email address contact. May I ask about cost? There will probably be 4 of us.

We will be in port from 7 am to 6 pm so we will have plenty of time to see several things.:)

[dfb]

dfb thanks I downloaded that 1st map but couldn't locate the pier or beach

http://www.frommers.com/images/destinations/maps/jpg-2006/3890_mantaattractions.jpg

The beach on the frommers map is labeled and sits to the left of the shape jutting out into the water, the pier. From memory and the photos on the blog, I am pretty sure that is where we docked and that the beach to the left of the pier is where we saw the surfers. Good luck, Debbie

[dfb]

Jaalice,

 

No, I never found a website for Metropolitan Touring, so I don't believe they have one. Our cost was $85 pp for 7:30am to 5pm and included lunch and entry fees. There were 3 of us. It sounds like you will be in port about the same hours that we were. You should email them and they will email you back with some options and prices. We had a really excellent day in Ecuador, others from our ship that did not fly to Quito or Otavalo were really unimpressed with the stop, so we were very satisfied with our decision. Debbie

[Addictedtwo]

Jaalice,

 

No, I never found a website for Metropolitan Touring, so I don't believe they have one. Our cost was $85 pp for 7:30am to 5pm and included lunch and entry fees. There were 3 of us. It sounds like you will be in port about the same hours that we were. You should email them and they will email you back with some options and prices. We had a really excellent day in Ecuador, others from our ship that did not fly to Quito or Otavalo were really unimpressed with the stop, so we were very satisfied with our decision. Debbie

 

Debbie thanks I think your right on the beach location, thanks.

As for Metro. Touring I did a google search and a ton of sites came up for Peru etc. You may want to have a look to see if any look familiar.

[dfb]

The company name on my receipt is Metropolitan Touring Manabi, so I Googled that and it looks like this might be the right/same company.

http://www.metropolitan-touring.com

But, I could not find our Machalilla National Park tour listed there, nor any tours out of Manta. So, I can't be sure. I know there is no website listed on the letterhead/receipt I got there. I don't think I had a website for there before we went because I didn't include it in the blog and I would have if I had one. Good luck, Debbie

[MightyQuinn]

As for Metro. Touring I did a google search and a ton of sites came up for Peru etc. You may want to have a look to see if any look familiar.

Addictedtwo - I can also give thumbs-up for Metropolitan Touring. We spent 4 weeks in Ecuador in 2005 & MT was our inbound tour operator for everything except our Galapagos cruise. We used them for usual stuff like airport transfers & hotel arrangements, as well as private tours in Quito, Otavalo, Cotapaxi, Cuenca & Ecuadorian Amazon. They were reliable, professional & fun. I'm not sure what coverage they have in Manta, but they are worth investigating. Here's the site: http://www.metropolitan-touring.com

[Addictedtwo]

The company name on my receipt is Metropolitan Touring Manabi, so I Googled that and it looks like this might be the right/same company.

www.metropolitan-touring.com

But, I could not find our Machalilla National Park tour listed there, nor any tours out of Manta. So, I can't be sure. I know there is no website listed on the letterhead/receipt I got there. I don't think I had a website for there before we went because I didn't incude it in the blog and I would have if I had one. Good luck, Debbie[/quote

 

Do a google search putting in the park name and try working from there, as often there will be tour companies attached to the sites. I did the search and there's lots of info on the park.

Some of the sites may lead to tripadvisor.com which is a great source for info.

You can also go into to tripadvisor open up an acct (free) and then do a search either by park name of by country, they also have chat forums there tat are pretty active. I have been using it all week for info with great success.

Sorry! you can do all the searching w/out an acct but if you want to chat then y'll need to open one.

[dfb]

I'm sorry. I guess I wasn't very clear. My point was that I don't think the Manta office has a website or is included in the greater Metro Touring website. I have been there and I was/am recommending Metropolitan Touring for Manta and specifically for Machalilla, since that was the tour we took. We kept a blog and here is a link for that day with photos. (BUT, AOL is shutting down their journals so this link is only good through 10/31/08! Sorry!)

http://journals.aol.com/dfriia/circle-south-america-2008-aboard/entries/2008/01/13/day-9-jan-12---manta-ecuador/1751

 

I agree with you about TripAdvisor and do use it frequently. Thanks for the tip. Debbie

[MightyQuinn]

We kept a blog and here is a link for that day with photos. (BUT, AOL is shutting down their journals so this link is only good through 10/31/08! Sorry!)http://journals.aol.com/dfriia/circle-south-america-2008-aboard/entries/2008/01/13/day-9-jan-12---manta-ecuador/1751

Debbie - Your cruise journals & pics are awesome. Absolutely first-class. I'm glad I discovered them before the dreaded shut-down. Thanks so much for sharing your wonderful experiences on RSSC with others. :cool::cool:

[dfb]

Thanks Quinn. Good news, it is a lot of work, but I am able to migrate the journals and photos over to a new host. (Now if I can just get it all off before AOL shuts the doors on it!) Anyway, here is the new link. Hopefully, it will stay up for many years! Debbie

 

http://circle-south-america-2008-aboard.blogspot.com/2008/01/day-9-jan-12-manta-ecuador.html

[Jujuju2]

dfb, based on your recommendation and others, we also toured with Metropolitan Touring in Manta during our one day stop there on Holland America's Ms. Amsterdam in April 2009. We had a shorter day than yours, and they were late getting us off the ship.

 

We were almost the very first ones off the ship, as Andrea and Veronica from Metropolitan Touring were very close to the gangplank with our names on signs, and one of the officers at the gangplank took it upon himself to call our room where we were waiting for the announcement that the ship had been cleared. So we sort of sneaked off the ship ahead of everybody else. We were a party of four. We dealt with Andrea by e-mail and had asked for a larger vehicle because three of us are over six feet tall and just wouldn't fit in a regular car with guide and driver. We got about a 12 passenger van, so we had plenty of room.

 

We also got Veronica and Carlos for our guide and driver, respectively. I am thinking Veronica must have been having an off day, or perhaps you got most of your useful information from Alegria. We did not get any information about housing styles, topography, flora, terrain, politics, weather, local living conditions from Veronica. She was mostly silent during the two hour drive to Machalilla National Park, although she would answer questions if we asked.

 

At the beginning of our tour, very close to the ship, maybe two miles away, we went to the daily fish market. That was one of the highlights of our tour. There were a great many people there buying and selling the fish that were even as we arrived coming in from the sea, six foot tunas in twelve foot boats. It was a bustling, exciting, interesting place to visit that we thoroughly enjoyed.

 

And then we took off for the National Park, which was about a two hour trip. Carlos is an excellent driver.

 

At the National Park we hooked up with a national park guide who spoke no English, and Veronica translated. I speak Spanish, sort of; it has been forty years ago since I studied it in school with no in-country immersion and no refreshers in between. Nevertheless, what Veronica was telling us left out a lot of what the guide said, leading me to believe her English is not that good, which might have accounted for her lack of narration in the car. Or something else, not sure what was going on.

 

Might I add that while we were in the national park, we ran into two of the ship's tour buses. Those folks were on pretty much the same itinerary as us, but they paid $189 for their trip, and we paid $85.

 

One thing we did in the national park that the ship's tour did not was, at the end of our half hour forest walk, change into our swimsuits and take a swim in a natural sulphur hot spring. There were maybe fifteen other people swimming, mostly locals and a couple savvy tourists. This was like the idealized swimming hole of one's youth. It was perfectly round, about fifty feet in diameter, maybe 12-16 feet deep. You had to climb in and out of the spring on tree limb ladders, and the water smelled very strongly of sulphur, neither of which is very feasible for a ship's tour. I thought the swim was just heavenly. The changing rooms were very primitive.

 

After a tour of the tiny museum with our national park guide narrating and Veronica translating, we went to lunch - and ran into the ship's tour!! Two buses full and all standing in line for a buffet. This was at a very lovely lodge/B&B/hotel location, La Mantaraya, with a pool surrounded by bougainvillea and whimsical topiary, overlooking a gorgeous view of the sea. The food, however, was not good. We did not have to stand in the buffet line, but it appears we got the leftovers that might have been prepared a few hours earlier. I don't remember exactly what we got, but the first course consisted of three lots of overcooked vegetables, broccoli, cauliflower, and something else, none of which I eat. Luckily I was in the restroom when it arrived and my husband had mine taken back and something else brought out, maybe cucumbers and tomatoes, not good but edible for me. Second course was more of the same vegetables as the first and some deep fried, long cold, calamari that was tough as rubber. Dessert was maybe flan, maybe pineapple, maybe choice of the two. I had to ask for bread during the meal just to be sure of having something edible so I wouldn't go away hungry. The bread went REAL fast. Veronica knew we did not like the lunch, but did not go through any of the conciliatory motions one might expect of a tour guide. Just sort of nothing.

 

We did not go to the beach, which sounds like it might have been interesting, but perhaps we used up that time going to the fish market in the morning.

 

At any rate, after lunch we went straight back to Manta and then made a very hurried trip to Montecristo, where we did not have time to visit the Panama hat factory, which I had been looking forward to. We had time to stop in ONE hat shop where one of our party bought a cute hat. And then we raced back to the ship.

 

Oh!! On the way back into town, we went by the beach where the fish market had been in the morning. By late afternoon the tide had come in, and the broad beach where the fishing boats had been run ashore had disappeared, and people were now swimming off a very narrow beach.

 

So, in summary, I wasn't thrilled with Metropolitan Touring, but it was okay, and certainly a better bargain than the ship's tour. Some folks we talked to back at the ship later in the day had taken taxis to the national park (although they weren't told about the hot spring, so I think we were the only ones who swam there), and then they went to the hat factory for a sum of about maybe $40-$50 each and probably had about as much fun as we did.

 

In summary, if you are thinking about taking the ship's tour to Machalilla National Park, go with Metropolitan Touring instead, despite my lukewarm recommendation.

 

But if you are more adventurous, go to the national park in a taxi and then go to Montecristo to the hat factory. OR, you can just get off the ship, and walk to the left along the shore and find all kinds of kiosks and swimming. And you can take the local bus to Montecristo very cheaply, just have to figure out how to do it. Or take a taxi. Or, take a taxi going to the right of the dock and find an excellent seafood restaurant for lunch.