My husband and I are leaving for 2 weeks in Ecuador and 2 weeks in Panama. First question is can anyone recommend a good bug repellent? I'm not crazy about deet but??? Second question concerns money. Every one seems to say that we must carry small denominations of US$ bills because (especially in Ecuador) people don't have the bills to make change and credit cards are not readily accepted. If a credit card is accepted I'm told an additional 10 percent is added to the bill. Has anyone had any experiences with this? We don't particularly like to carry so much cash in small denominations--enough to last 4 weeks! We do plan to take travelers checks and we always take our ATM card but we won't be in any large cities so ATMs might be scarce for us. Any first hand information on the money issue? Also, we are going to the Galapagos for 1 week and I'm told that the $100 pp park fee should not be paid with a $100 bill because we might have trouble having it accepted. Any help on these issues is appreciated!

Regards, Jane, Boca Raton