(Part of a series of articles by Fi trawling the archives for photos taken on the tiny compact camera way back when).

We spent far longer than intended in Guayaquil searching for the elusive sweet deal for the Galapagos. My memories are of a waterfront shopping plaza, a mix of colonial and modern buildings and the iguana park. We had a binge on home naughtiness – KFC & Pizza Hut, neither of which were much like the UK versions.

After no joy at booking a tour we decided to simply fly out to the islands and arrange our own trips there. We had heard that many tours offered better deals for cash but that the few cash machines on the island were often empty so it recommended to travel with dollars ready. The rest of my time in Guayaquil was spent visiting the cash machine to stock up on dollars to stuff $1,000’s in my bra! We had been warned of the city’s dangerous reputation and while we never really felt that unsafe it did feel a bit reckless to be wandering around the streets with our combined cash withdrawal limit of approx $1000 a time so the bra seemed the safest storage area!