Three days in Guayaquil: a river port with iguanas loose in the main square

Start in Parque Seminario, which everybody calls the iguana park, and which is exactly that: a formal square of paths and ficus trees a couple of blocks from the river, full of land iguanas that live there permanently and are entirely unbothered by people. There are dozens of them, some over a metre long, sunning on the paths and climbing the trees, and the city feeds and monitors them. It is the strangest thing in Guayaquil and it takes five minutes to find.

The white neo-Gothic cathedral faces the square across the street. It is a twentieth century rebuild rather than anything old, cool and quiet inside, and it takes fifteen minutes.

Then walk east to the water for the end of the day. The Malecón Simón Bolívar, the riverfront that Guayaquil rebuilt in the late 1990s and named Malecón 2000, runs two and a half kilometres along the Guayas past gardens, monuments, a moored ship and a great deal of ice cream. It is fenced, gated and patrolled, and it is where the entire city goes in the evening. Walk it northwards as the heat drops.

Go up Cerro Santa Ana early, before the heat. The staircase starts at the northern end of the Malecón and climbs the hill in 444 numbered steps, past houses painted in flat blues, greens and yellows, with bars, ice cream stalls and small galleries every few landings. This was where the Spanish first built and later a hillside slum; the regeneration in the early 2000s rebuilt the facades and put police on the stairs. At the top there is a small chapel, the remains of a fort with cannon pointing at the river, and a blue and white lighthouse you can climb for the whole city and the delta beyond it.

Come down into Las Peñas itself, the one street of nineteenth century timber houses that survived, and then head inland to the Museo Municipal. It is small, free and better than it needs to be: pre-Columbian ceramics and stone, colonial pieces, a room on how the city grew, and the shrunken heads that everybody remembers afterwards.

In the late afternoon cross town to the Malecón del Salado, the second and quieter waterfront on the salt estuary that runs down the western side of the city. It has footbridges, pedal boats and cheap restaurants, no tour buses, and a local crowd. It is a good place to see how the city uses the water it is not famous for.

Parque Histórico is across the river in Samborondón, and it is the one thing in Guayaquil that surprises people. It is part zoo, part open-air museum and part mangrove: raised walkways through wetland with sloths, tapirs, macaws and caimans in large enclosures, a reconstruction of a coastal farmstead, and a small square of colonial houses that were dismantled downtown and rebuilt here rather than demolished.

Go at opening, when the animals are moving and the boardwalks are still in shade. Two or three hours covers it comfortably and it is free on most days.

The park is on the same side of the river as the airport and about twenty minutes from it, which makes this an easy last morning. Eat at the park or on the way, then go.