Manta
After spending the weekend in Quito, we hopped on a plane and flew to Manta for our next round of Spanish lessons. There are three main geographic areas in Ecuador (four if you count Galapagos). There is the Andean mountains, the Amazon, and the Coast. This is our first venture outside the mountain areas.
Manta is a gritty shipping port and fishing town. It is supposed to be the same size as Cuenca – sister-city on the coast. But Manta feels much smaller because it is more spread out. The sharp mountains and rivers on every side force Cuenca to be compact, but Manta simply sprawls in a low-density flat plain. And since it is on the beach, it naturally spreads north and south.
Cuenca developed a well-defined ‘Centro’, a 10×10 block area of narrow streets, wonderful restaurants and cafe’s, churches, and museums. Manta doesn’t have any of that. Instead, the core of ‘old’ Manta is a long boardwalk along the beach with a few condo towers, some banks, and countless bars and karaoke clubs.
The Malecon (boardwalk) forms a cup that defines the old city. Within that cup, Manta keeps a regular grid of city streets for another 15 blocks inland, and then fades into the suburbs.
The beach is huge, with perfect sand. Here’s a picture that gives a flavor of it in the busy downtown area (after school)…
…and in the less busy part just north of the downtown (past the end of the boardwalk).
The beach defines the city – to the north are condos, and to the south are the harbours, ports, and the airport. Everything is placed in relation to the ocean. Here’s a view from two block past the north end of the boardwalk:
Manta is not a city that rewards pedestrians—each building seems to have built the sidewalk to its own specifications. Cars have the right of way in all situations, and a pedestrian needs to be alert. Manta and Cuenca are as different as two cities could be.
The buildings in old Manta are airier, larger and painted in lighter colors. People keep gardens here, and they sit outside to enjoy the sun. This is our host Zoila, and Michelle sitting in her front porch.
Homes here appear poor, but we have learned not to judge from the exterior – if you have wealth, you hide it behind a modest facade. We do not see the beggars, squeegee kids, and street hustlers that we saw in the more crowded streets of Cuenca and Riobamba. But it DOES seem very run-down.
Manta does not seem as safe as Cuenca. We are told to avoid the smaller streets after dark (only walking on the major avenues), and not staying out late. Like Cuenca, each house bristles with security bars and wrought-iron fences, but here they are stronger, tighter, and kept locked during the day.
Here’s an example – a pharmacy. During the day, customers may present themselves and perform their transactions through the cage. At night, a solid grate that seals it at night.
There are security guards outside banks and large stores (same as Cuenca), but we also notice armed guards on transport trucks carrying goods across the city. We had avoided the larger coast city of Guayaquil, because of its dangerous reputation, opting for the smaller, quieter city of Manta, we are not sure it was a good decision.
As our faithful reader Larry Marler pointed out, the security guards are not indicative of crime but rather the opposite – firms with guards don’t have problems, and the presence of guards makes the streets safe. Hiring guards may make perfect sense in an economy where the average monthly wage is only $300.
But still, it’s not what we expected. So we asked Karen, our Spanish teacher, about security. She explained that the problems stem from Guayaquil, which everyone agrees is a city to be avoided. About 5 years ago, the mayor of Guayaquil clamped down hard on crime. He hired more policemen, put up security cameras, and generally made life hard for professional criminals. So they quickly spread out across the coast, and suddenly Manta faced a crime wave.
For a time, things were very bad in Manta – robbery, kidnappings, etc. Then Manta followed the solution of Guayaquiil. There are armed guards on every municipal bus. Security cameras patrol the major streets, and the police are quickly on the scene if something looks wrong.
The city is again considered safe and tranquil, but the habits of those years remains. Wealthy Manteans keep 24-hour guards, houses are barricaded, and large, mean dogs are popular house pets.
In the three days we have been here, we have walked the length and breadth of the central part of the city (during the day), and we have never had any cause to feel anxious or insecure.
Once you leave ‘old’ Manta, however, the flavor changes. Zoila’s nephew gave us a tour by car. On the outskirts of the city are huge gated communities – we drove through one ‘village’ that must have had 1,500 homes, cookie-cut in three or four models. Armed security guards walk the quiet streets, aggressively challenging anyone who they don’t recognize. (A two-story, 1,500 sq ft detached home is about $70,000). And even here, many houses have added full grates over the doors and windows.
These communities are where the middle-class lives. There are also residential towers in the suburbs. I suspect the reason ‘old’ Manta looks poor and deserted is that anyone who can afford better moves out. It explains why empty lots can sit derelict, and why the stores and restaurants look so shabby.
Further on up the beach beyond the edge of town are big condominium resorts, marketed to foreigners. Again, these are gated and self-contained villages. Howard Johnson runs the biggest and ritziest, with a casino and several American-style restaurants, swimming pools, health clubs, etc. Several even bigger resorts are under construction, $250,000 will get you the biggest dream home in the best of them – affordable Florida-style resort retirement, only 10 minutes from Manta’s downtown.
Obviously, my preference is the noisy randomness and messiness of a vibrant downtown, mixing retail, office, and residential buildings. But a break-in or two would quickly change my mind.