March 7, 8, and 9, 2020, Saturday to Monday
We are again in that geographically determined dead zone with no internet. We met it in Brazil and here we are again. I do not know when these priceless missives will make it out of South America.
I’m going ashore here in Manta but not yet. I am sitting in my stateroom while the people signed up for tours get off. Local health authorities have created a huge bottleneck by taking the temperature of every person coming ashore. They use a devise sort of like a Star Trek phaser and aim it at your face. All of the medical and dock workers wear masks. Has anyone mentioned to them that masks are no defence against viruses? Ah well. At least it looks like you’re proactive. Since I don’t have to be anywhere, I’ll wait.
We take a shuttlebus to: ready for this?: a shuttlebus. The first gets us off this working dock and the second gets us downtown. Again we are the stepchildren of the shipping industry, parked among freighters.
A quinoa hauler
Unloading quinoa in Ecuador
I’m not complaining. Being nestled among freight haulers is a lot more interesting than berthing next to some other cruise ship. At the moment I am watching somebody’s health food being unloaded. It is a grain ship 600 feet long or so, chock full of quinoa. No containers, no boxes or bags. They simply filled the ship to the top with quinoa. The ship has four cranes permanently installed beside the holds’ hatch covers, each with a clamshell scoop; you know, huge opposing jaws. The scoops can raise half a truckload of grain out of the hold at a bite.
Grain-hauling semis stream past our bow, get filled up, and away they go. It’s more efficient than it sounds like.
On the port side, they were unloading garbage from another working vessel; looks like a fisherman. A shore crane lifts a cargo net full of big plastic trash bags out of the ship’s hold. The bags are full of other bags. Is it garbage or is it the boat’s catch? I can’t tell. It drops the load into the back of a dump truck. A fellow in the dump truck unhooks all the cargo net rings, then hooks one of them up again, the one for the bottom. The crane raises the net, retrieving it as its contents tumble down into the truck, and lowers it back into the hold for another load.
I have long been amazed by the efficacy of container ships hauling so much so far. But hats off to these smaller vessels that are the workhorses of shipping, taking the stuff container vessels don’t have time to bother with. Like garbage and/or fish. And three hundred truckloads of health food.