Tuesday January 10

Very warm. 

Since Doug has a glitch in his computer, Fellette will try to recap our day.

We we were off early on a bus tour to learn how Panama hats are made. No, we are not in Panama but all those Panama hats are made in Ecuador! This is the country that has the right kind of palm tree from which they get the material to weave them. It is an extremely labour intensive job. The fineness of the strands dictate the level of cost in the the finished product.

We also went to a button factory. Here they turn the taiga nut into button blanks that are mostly sent to Europe to be further processed by dying and buttonholing . Here in Ecuador tho' the clever carvers make all sorts of touristy trinkets. Off course we had to take home something, so our curio shelf will now sport a colourful pelican.

Another stop this morning was at a resort where we learned how to make a traditional Ecuadorean breakfast from plantain (that's a variety of banana that must be cooked). We sat at a table for 4 and one of our number got to do all the work. After she completed each step, the raw ball was replaced with a whole plate of cooked ones so we all got to taste a very bland ball that had the flavour of potato. 

We had an interesting day for sure, and even had a short stop in a fishing village where we managed to scoop some sand for son-in-law robert's sand collection. Did you know, no two beaches have the same texture or colour of sand? 

After we got back to the ship at 2:00, we gulped a quick lunch and then grabbed the shuttle bus to town. That took us to a local market set up for us tourists. There was free internet as well as lots of stalls to browse through. I even bought myself a ladies Panama Hat that I will get to wear tomorrow , it will be hat day!! Grown ups having fun!!!!

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This is Doug now, the above was written by Fellette as she mentioned. My iPad would not connect at 1:30 nor 3:15 this morning and Fellette volunteered to write a blog as my previously written one could not be sent. However at 4:00 am I solved my problem just as Fellette finished hers. 

So today you get two!!!