Manta, Ecuador

January 11, 2008

After an early breakfast I made my way down the gang plank and boarded one of the first shuttles into the small and busy fishing port of Manta, Ecuador. Although hustling with activity, the community of some 400,000 seems to be suffering economically. In typical fashion, the market was jammed with the usual tourist junk complete with sad-eyed young boys who were obviously skipping school to peddle small packets of Chiclets and to beg to shine your shoes…no matter that you may be wearing white sneakers! . Mothers with their babies strapped to their backs worked fiendishly to lay out their wares in neat and tidy rows while their husbands and men folk stood around watching and whistling at the younger girls strolling by in their skin-tight jeans and six inch spiked and scuffed heels. Such a scene! I couldn’t help but chuckle at the contrast of some of my fellow travelers, who in their elder years, struggle with canes and shuffling feet to negotiate the paths of these aggressive vendors. What a dramatic contrast of how we live and how this hard-working salt-of- the-earth people live. It seemed almost sinful to see the rich tourist cajole and barter to extreme for some trinket that they will, no doubt, forget where they even bought it or, more importantly, why they bought it.. I silently watched one stately gentlemen bargain with one hat peddler…it worked! The price slowly but surely reduced from $30.00 to an eventual $10.00 complete with a balsam box for carrying.

Returning to the ship for lunch I sat for a few minutes on the deck watching the fishing vessels come and go. This is fishing in a serious way…major fishing…tuna fishing. Large crisp and tidy boats used 30-40 foot cranes to unload net after net filled with large fish. There were at least six or seven of these large boats each hauling out hundreds of nets of fish….it makes one wonder how many fish can be in the ocean when you think that this is one village with a few boats and yet that many fish are harvested daily all over the world. As soon as the fish were unloaded open-caged trucks arrived on the scene and a “hive” of hard-hatted men began unfurling, with the help of the large cranes, these enormous black fishing nets. What a ballet. The nets which seem to go on for miles looked new…very black and VERY big. A continuous row of large bright yellow floats bordered the edge, looking like a large necklace. While 10-15 men struggled to lay the unfurling net into a neat pile on the deck of the ship, two other men carefully “spiraled” the floats in an ever-growing cylinder. I have to assume that the careful placement of these floats and the stacking of the net means that once the ship is at sea and ready to deploy the nets that they will, hopefully, enter the water tangle free. Other ships docked near by that had completed the process and boasted a “pile” of black netting that rose 20-30 feet. I am here to tell you that these nets are BIG.

After a light lunch I joined a few fellow passengers to be escorted to a small Panama Hat factory on the outskirts of the village of Montecristi which is a “suburb” of greater downtown Manta and apparently the center of the Panama Hat business. It was here that we saw first-hand the entire process. The new growth of the Paja Toquilla palm…one that looks like what we call a Palmetto Palm…is shredded into fine, medium, or coarse fibers. These fibers are then boiled and stirred for some twenty minutes which has a bleaching effect. Once dried, the weaving of the hat begins. Laborers, both male and female use pre-sized wooden blocks or forms around which they weave fine a fine “plating” Sometimes this weaving is plain and other times it is very intricate. It was so fascinating to see a small fifteen-year old boy work his fingers so quickly that it was almost impossible to see what he was doing….the very delicate lace-like pattern is, apparently, his signature. I asked if he could recognize his hat from others and he smiled a toothless proud smile and said “Si! Si.”

I am unclear how many hours or days it takes to form the basic hat but once done it is passed on to another craftsperson who makes the brim. Again fingers flew as the brim grew wider and wider. The next skilled person does the finishing edge where the fibers are woven back into the brim. After washing, treating, and trimming, the hat is finally returned to the form to be pressed (using old irons heated in the fire!) into shape. A band is added and voila you have a hat…a Panama Hat. When asked why they are called Panama Hats when they are made in Ecuador, it seems that when the Panama Canal was being built that the workers used these hats to protect themselves from the hot sun and thus they got the name….true? who knows, but it sounds good to me! And YES! I bought one. I went for a medium grade hat and paid a grand total of $20.00…so little money for so many hours of skilled labor. The most expensive one I saw was $80. and yes, it was so finely woven that it could be passed thru a wedding ring. So watch out for me in photographs as I strut thru the South American rain forests with my fancy hat.

We sail tonight for Guayaquil Ecuador which, we have been told, is a more prosperous and booming place….stay tuned!