Floaty Light

We only had a few km after crossing the border to reach Somoto Canyon, and were still high up (well 800m) surrounded by glorious green hillsides. After staying in the yard of a local guide & his family, we set off at 9am to do the long canyon tour with Claudia, one of his daughters. She kept asking us if Maya liked swimming & we soon realized why as we had to launch ourselves off rocks into a deep, smooth sided, water filled canyon. Maya was loving it and swimming really well, until she discovered that it was far easier to sit on the backs of our life jackets!

We opted for the long tour and spent 5 hours meandering our way through the canyon. Fortunately the water was a beautiful temperature, and it was much nicer to lazily float along than walk along the banks.

By the time we got back to camp we were pretty shattered, and we had a lovely meal cooked for us by Fausto's wife. The whole family lived on the same plot and they kept coming over for little chats. They were all members of the village cooperative who ran the tours of the canyon, and it was nice to be away from the backpacker trail and in the heart of real Nicaragua.

That night it rained pretty hard (well the rainy season is supposed to start in May), and by the morning the place had turned into a quagmire. The whole family got covered in mud trying to get us out (at one point the main guy Fausto even insisted on washing my feet!) and after an hour of struggle we eventually got our tyres onto firm ground.Read more