Naranjal

Naranjal, now this is one you may not hear a lot about. It’s a small city outside of Guayaquil where a volunteer I was visiting lived. We were throwing a surprise party for a friend and decided that a hike would be the best birthday present. Naranjal brags of waterfall hikes, that an be physically challenging but worth the trek. I will say I like Naranjal. The city was small, but not campo like I thought. It’s an actually city with stores, cars and even a Tia! (that’s a store that I liken to Walgreens). We had to drive a little ways (in the back of a truck, you already know) to even get to the location to start the hike. It started off chill enough, but soon it became an issue of if we wanted to advance we had to climb ropes to get there. It was crazy and I never thought I was going to be able to climb using the ropes,
but I did and it was great. We swam in the waterfalls and climbed the rocks. Our group ranged from experienced and adventurous to I-just-have-on-street- clothes-and-I-don’t-do-this-kind-of-thing! The experienced helped, us less experienced and we had fabulous time. We rewarded ourselves with ice cream and brownies to close out the birthday and headed home. It was a great day trip and I liked knowing that an adventure like that is only an hour or so away.