It doesn't always go to plan

El Salvador to Nicaragua via Honduras, Somoto Canyon

03.02.2011 - 04.03.2011
View Destination - south on ew5827's travel map.

As we left Perquín, El Salvador early in the morning we knew we had a lot of connections ahead of us, but if everything went to plan we should be there by mid afternoon...but when does anything go to plan! There were eight legs to the journey with two border crossings:

Perquín to San Francisco Gotera (pick-up)
San Francisco Gotera to Kilometre 18 (bus)
Kilometre 18 to San Carlos (bus)
San Carlos to El Amatillo (bus) El Salvadorian-Honduran border
El Amatillo to Choluteca (bus)
Choluteca to San Marcos de Colon (bus)
San Marcos de Colon to El Espino (collectivo/minivan) Honduran-Nicaraguan border
El Espino to Somoto (taxi)

The El Salvarodian part of the journey went really smoothly but as soon as we hit Honduras it all started to unravel. The bus to Choluteca took forever and when we arrived we couldn't find the bus to San Marcos or anyone who seemed to know where it went from. Everyone pointed in a different direction; it was so hot and frustrating! It seems to be a latino thing that if you don't know where something is you still give some directions anyway rather than saying I don't know. Not good if you're a lost tourist!! Finally a bus arrived heading for San Marcos but it was already 2pm by this point. Arriving in San Marcos about 4pm, it was another agonising wait for a minibus to fill up before we could leave for the border only a few miles away at El Espino. Finally at the Honduran-Nicaraguan border we thought we'd almost made it, only to find the tourist card price has been doubled! We didn't have enough money spare so we got shafted in the duty free shop trying to get some cashback in dollars. They were trying to get Chris to buy a TV but settled on some expensive disney chocolate. We finally got into Nicaragua at about 5.30pm having left Perquín at 8am. The straw that broke the camel's back was that by faffing around at immigration we'd just missed the last bus into Somoto and ended up having to pay an extortionate amount for a taxi instead, ahhhh!

A pricey welcome to Nicaragua! And then our beds in the hostels had black bits all over them so I spent the whole night worried we had bed bugs. Luckily we didn't, I think it was just stuff falling from the roof instead, nice!

Back to happy days of travelling

The following morning we walked, scrambled, swam and rappelled down Somoto canyon. Our guide was amazing, chilled out but very safety conscious. He's had quite a life having fought in three civil wars - Nicaragua, Korea and Argentina. Only about 2% of the population in Nicaragua are over the age of 50 due to the conflict and we guessed he couldn't be too far off that age bracket.

The wall of the canyon, eroded by the river

Cheeeese

The canyon was beautiful with interesting formations in the rocks, logs wedged across the river where the water level has fallen for the dry season leaving them stranded and then there were the huge spiders clinging to the walls! One was the size of my hand minus the tips of my fingers and the others weren't much smaller! I watched where I put my hands a lot more carefully after seeing those though our guide said they weren't poisonous.

The canyon narrows

In the wet season all of this would be under water

At one point we had to climb down the side of a waterfall using a rope with him holding the other end. I was barefoot as I don't have any trainers with me and flipflops are useless and I couldn't get any grip. It takes a lot of faith when it's just another person holding the other end! I really wasn't sure to begin with but we managed it fine.

We rappelled down the bottom of this picture

For the last bit of the canyon we took a small boat then walked along the bank back up the road. On the way we passed kids playing in the river and some people herding cattle across. It was nice to see some normal Nicaraguan country life.