Manta, Eguador and Coffee Plantation

For today’s trip we joined our friends from 2017 cruise Erin, Mui, Pat and Norm.
It is our first time in Manta.
The name of the tour is “The coffee and Beach Experience”
We did not know much more what to expect.

The tour started at 8:00 AM with drive to higher elevation to visit Dos Maños coffee plantation. Dos Maños is two monkeys in Spanish. When we got to the plantation, we could hear loud monkey howling, but could not see them.

The owner and our host was Juan who was born in Puerto Rico, lived in many places in USA and after retirement settled in Ecuador. He is still working and doing philanthropic work to improve life of local people and especially children.

He explained to us different methods to process coffee and then we went for a walk through coffee trees, tasting coffee beans right from the plants. They call them “cherry”. Actually, the outer layer of the beans is very sweet.

After harvesting beans, they dry them at the sea level to avoid higher elevation humidity (which did not make sense to us).
But I guess they know what they doing.
During drying process, they rake beans and then grind them to a desired size depending on what equipment used to make coffee.

After that we visited Juan’s house on the beach. The location, the beautiful house, the tasteful decorations and welcoming host were wonderful. He made us feel very welcome, telling us interesting stories about his life and philanthropic work, making coffee for us, which we enjoyed with a beautiful view of the ocean.

He also showed us his collection of artifacts he plans to donate after his death .

We met his daughter’s little dog named Monkey. His daughter died after car accident and this little dog is the closest thing he has.

It was time to say goodbye and have lunch.
We drove to a restaurant Fish Cevicheria. There were rows of restaurants on the beach, but this looked like most popular.
I had ceviche and Boris has a fish soup.

The next stop after lunch was beach break. Unfortunately, the waves were very high and it did not look safe to go into the ocean.
I went for a walk on the beach with Pat. The water was warm, the sand was packed and easy to walk.

After spending sometime on the beach, we decided it is enough and time to go back.
On the way to the ship we stopped at the supermarket. I was looking for good dark chocolate, but did not find any. Instead I got two bananas and one mango for $0.55.
Mango was very delicious.
Overall it was a very good tour.

In the evening Erin, Mui and us had a dinner at the Polo Grill with General Manager Claudio (from Italy) and Executive Concierge Julio (from Chile).
Delicious dinner and a great company.

We skipping a show, but heard it was a good one.
Tomorrow is another port, we need a rest.Читать далее