Experience the best of Manta

Manta is Ecuador's main tuna port, a Pacific city in Manabí province whose harbour is full of fishing boats and whose factories can the catch. The city has a waterfront promenade and a museum of the pre-Columbian Manteño culture, whose seafaring traders sailed this coast long before the Spanish. Playa Murciélago, the city beach, is lined with seafood restaurants.

Montecristi, a short drive inland, is where the finest toquilla-straw hats, wrongly called Panama hats, have been woven for centuries, and where the mausoleum of the national hero Eloy Alfaro stands on a hilltop. Santa Marianita, to the west, draws kitesurfers, Crucita, to the north-east, paragliders, and to the south Machalilla National Park and the offshore Isla de la Plata are reached from Puerto López.

Ceviche, fried fish with plantain, viche de pescado, a thick fish and peanut soup, and corviche, a fried plantain snack stuffed with fish, are the Manabí specialities. Humpback whales pass offshore between about June and September. The rains are short and fall mostly from January to April, and the rest of the year is dry and breezy.