![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog_pics\/201604_voyager\/2016-03-31_iguana_manta.jpg\")
<\/p>\nAt around 7:30am, this morning, the ship returned to the quayside in Manta.<\/p>\n
As we hadn’t been assigned any tour escorting duties today, our choice of activities were our own, so we decided we’d take the free shuttle bus into town and head for the beach.<\/p>\n
When we walked down onto the quayside from the gangway, the first thing we noticed was the large queue of passengers, waiting for the shuttle bus. As with the previous stop, no-one is allowed to walk independently to the port entrance, or in fact anywhere other than the quayside immediately next to the ship. Instead, they have to huddle under a gazebo out of the sun and wait for the ridiculously small shuttle bus (we’re talking transit-sized min-van here) that seems to take an age between trips. There were three returns of the bus before we finally got on it.<\/p>\n
At the other end, we had to fight our way through the barrage of mythering taxi drivers desperate for our business, before finally finding ourselves on the main road into town.<\/p>\n
Manta is a busy old place, with a small park bursting with Iguanas of all shapes, sizes and colours.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
large ones like this magnificent beastie seem to pose unashamedly for the camera while small green ones dart around like they’re living in a completely different time-frame.<\/p>\n
We tootled around the park and the town for about an hour before returning to the shuttle bus drop-off point, which was conveniently situated right next to the beach.<\/p>\n
It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out what we did next. We paid $4 for a a couple of deckchairs under a parasol and went for a good long swim in the Pacific Ocean… verrrry nice!!!<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, despite taking precautions, and spending as much time under the umbrella as possible, to prevent ourselves from burning… we both got well and truly cooked!<\/p>\n
By the time we returned to the ship, we’d missed lunch by five minutes. To compensate for this, we went to afternoon tea at 4pm, where they serve sandwiches and cakes alongside tea and coffee. I stuffed myself with so many sandwiches and slices of quiche that when dinner came around a couple of hours later, I wasn’t very hungry (but that might also have something to do with the heat…).<\/p>\n
That sunburn is going to come back to bite us…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At around 7:30am, this morning, the ship returned to the quayside in Manta. As we hadn’t been assigned any tour escorting duties today, our choice of activities were our own, so we decided we’d take the free shuttle bus into town and head for the beach. When we walked down onto the quayside from the gangway, the first thing we...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1007"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1007"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1008,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1007\/revisions\/1008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}