Wednesday – January 29
This is basically the same page as in our January 2014 Update, with more pictures.
Today was our day for a scheduled tour of the Somoto Canyon. This is part of what http://vianica.com/attraction/141/somoto-canyon says:
The Somoto Canyon, one of oldest rock formations in Central America, has become one of the main attractions of Northern Nicaragua due to its recently "discovered" tourist potential. It is an impressive site with a unique scenario. Between its walls, visitors can undertake various activities.
Fifteen minutes West from the city of Somoto, capitol of the department of [visit/madriz], tourists will find this amazing geological structure that inhabitants of the area call "the structure" or "Namancambre".
The vertical walls extend for approximately five miles, on a sinuous path whose width varies between 10 and 15 meters. The waters from the Comali River (from Honduras) and Tapacali join to form the extense Coco River. In its bottom, the calmness of the water is interrupted by rocky formations that have created seven or eight small ponds with an environment filled with life, plants and fish.
The cliffs have a height of 120 and 150 meters. In the narrowest area, they are located five meters away from each other. According to the Nicaraguan Institute of Territorial Studies (INETER), these interesting columns are the result of a geological formation, combined with the erosive action of the water.
This is what Juanita e-mailed to friends and family about our day:
We did the Canyon yesterday. What a rush!!! I do not know if we would have done it if we had known the details. About 6 hours of walking, floating/swimming with life jackets, much more of the same in and out of water finally coming to a place where we got into a boat, off loaded with more walking a lot of which was walking up out of the canyon to finally end at the guides house for an already prepared lunch (about 3:00). It was well worth it !!! Unfortunately much of the floating was done with our cameras safely in the guide’s waterproof bag. Neither of us are moving very well this morning and Dad/Paul has sunburn that we will shortly try to find a pharmacy that has something for relief.
After finding meds we will head back to Estelí for two nights where Paul will hopefully get pictures put on his web page.
We were up and dressed and out in the courtyard in time for the breakfast that we had been told would start at 7. Coffee and juice came about then and we self-served that and sat at a table. Not too long later a plate each arrived with a typical NIca breakfast of gallo pinto (rice and red beans mixture) a fried egg and accessories.
We went back to our room and started preparing to be ready to be at the front desk to meet our guide at 8. At about ten to eight our guide arrived and knocked on our door. We quickly finished getting ready and joined him. He asked if we minded if a couple of muchachos (guys) joined us. We didn’t mind. They were in their early forties and from near Berlin in former East German territory. We had enough overlap in Spanish and English and “speaking with our hands and feet” as one put it that we communicated fine. The cab fare to the trailhead was included in our fee, but the cab was parked across town across the highway from the market we walked to yesterday. A brisk walk later (sort of a pre-test for fitness for the day’s hike) and all five of us joined the cab drive in his sub compact. Juanita and the guide, being the skinniest, shared the front passenger seat.
There was a warning sign in the room that valuables left in the room were at the guests’ own risk and the hotel would only be responsible for stuff left for safekeeping. We left the bag with the front desk. They started to put it under the desk to be taken to the lock up later, but I fussed and the desk clerk headed off with it. He may have just gone around the corner until I was out of sight, but I went away happy.
At the guide’s house they told us to get rid of everything but a camera and a bottle of water. We put our passports and other valuables in our backpack in a locked room. It was the guide’s house and his family lived there and they have a lot more to lose business wise with a bad publicity than they would gain from the contents of our bag. Juanita had on beach shoes. I had on my five finger vibes. Both were declared adequate by the chief guide. Otherwise he would have supplied beach shoes. After being fitted with life jackets and shown how our day would unfold on a map we gave our lunch orders from a menu. Then back into the waiting cab with the guide for the day and up the road a few miles to the trail head for the “five hour tour” of The Somoto canyon.
We walked a few kilometers to a stream where some locals were washing clothes and then across the stream, over some rocks and we started down Rio Tapacali, a tributary of Rio Coco, the longest river in Central America.
The pictures do not do the trip justice. We spent a lot more time floating than would be indicated by the pictures since our cameras were stowed in a waterproof backpack when we were in the water or carried by the guide where there was a reasonable expectation we would slip and fail wading over slippery boulders.
The guide demonstrated the sensitive plant which recoils from touch and he pointed out many bee hives in the crevices under overhanging cliffs. Bats live under some of the overhangs as well and they left in a crowd when splashed by the guide. On some spots there are large spiders on the rock faces. They blend in so well I don’t think I would see them if not told about them. The guide grabbed one and threw it half way across the pool we were floating through. The spider ran back toward the rock face hopping across the surface of the water. It seemed to stumble a few times and then disappeared below the surface, dragged under by a fish. I asked about piranhas. The guide said there weren’t any in this river.
At one point we were wading and floating and we were passed by a couple of young men who were managing to get downstream walking along paths in the cliffs. They were carrying spear guns and face masks for diving. When they crossed the river near us I asked to look at one of their spear guns. It was homemade from pieces of wood, steel, pipe fittings and surgical rubber. It was about the same technology we used in our neighbourhood when I was young. By the next time we saw they had stripped down and were working a pool looking for fish. No luck by that point but it didn’t seem to be their first fishing trip and hat suggests they must have caught something in the past.
There was a spot where we could jump off a large boulder into a deep spot. Both Germans jumped. Being a bit of a wuss and not wanting to deal with losing glasses or being blind while they were carried for me I got in upstream a bit and floated to the spot. About five feet to the left of where they jumped was a rock about two feet below the surface. Good to have a guide. It would be just as easy to jump in the wrong spot without somebody to tell you.
We had been passed by a couple of groups moving more quickly than we were. We rested where Rio Tapacali and Rio Comali meet to form Rio Coco. A little after a large group and their guide we carried on downstream. About half way through our tour we caught up with a guide and a couple. The couple were Russell and Shirley, a retired couple from Ontario. We had seen them and talked when we were in Estelí. They were staying at the Hostal El Alvergue when we were there. They still were. They had caught an espresso early in the morning and got off at the guide’s house. The way you catch and expresso is from Esteli to Somoto is to wait at the gas station in Esteli for an expresso from Managua. If they have developed a vacancy by somebody getting off they will sell you that seat. If all the seats are full you are out of luck. They had been in luck. They had also booked a 3:30 bus back to Esteli. Their canyon tour was four hour tour, which means that they didn’t ride up the highway from the guide’s house, they walked to a path up the highway and then walked down to meet the river more downstream than our group had. That’s how they managed to “get ahead” of us by starting later.
We ended up travelling together for most of the rest of the tour. In the canyon one has the opportunity to jump into a pool from various heights up to 66 feet / 20 meters. The Germans jumped from about half height. Shirley went in from about five feet. Russell climbed backwards down the rock into the pool. Juanita and I followed his example. Then both guides jumped the max. Walking along later, Russell told me his experience a few years previously. He had jumped from the maximum height, following the guide’s advice to stay straight, keep your feet together pointed down, your hands together above your head and not to yell. It was a real rush. So he did it again. Not so much of a rush, but still okay. He was talking up the experience with a couple of young women later in Matagalpa and they were quite interested. A few weeks later he met up with one of them in Honduras and asked where her friend was. Apparently she had not followed the guide’s advice to the letter and raised her legs a bit and let out a yell about half way down. She hit the water wrong and started feeling terrible that evening and bleeding as if she had her period. The friend stayed by her side in the hospital for three days and then her parents came down and she was medevac’d back to the States. No wonder Russell has such strong opinions on the safety of jumping there.
The floating part of the tour sets its own pace. The walking on rocks, especially slippery ones out of view under water could easily take on a death march aspect with having to pay such close attention to footing and trying to keep up with others, but the guides set a good rhythm with stops to see things and to catch one’s breath. At one spot where we were hanging around the water flow narrowed to a spot less than three feet wide between two boulders. I started picking up rocks and filling the gap. Juanita suggested it was a bad idea since I might be breaking some rules. Shortly after that I decided it was a bad idea as well when I picked up a rock and there was a snake under it. I mentioned the snake and everybody gathered around to see. Right about then Russell mentioned that there was a scorpion by my feet. I leapt about three feet sideways and the scorpion became the new attraction. I kept my distance. It was a good size, about three inches long with its stinger curled and waving.
At the portion of the canyon which appears on the Nicaraguan fifty Cordoba bill there were boats waiting. We all got into one and the boatman rowed us down river to the landing where some hapless vendor stood trying to sell bracelets to a bunch of tourists who had been told to leave their money in lock up.
From the landing we walked a bit then forded the river one last time and walked a long way up an at time steep road to the guide’s house where we changed our clothes and ate our lunches. Russell and Shirley took off in haste to catch a chicken bus from Somoto back to Esteli, having missed their 3:30 express bus. I wished them well for purely selfish reasons. If they make it back in time to do something on their agenda tonight, then they will leave for Leon tomorrow morning and that means we get their room at Hostal El Alvergue. At this time only the upstairs rooms get wi-fi and their room is the only matrimonio (double bed) on the upper level. I am sure that as the new rooms get added they will add wi-fi repeaters, but for now the metal Q deck used as the form for pouring the second floor blocks the signal from the lower rooms.
The head guide and the four people in our tour group get into a sub-compact taxi and go back to Somoto. The cabbie is heavier than the one this morning and he has trouble with shifting gears with three people in front. I miss getting a picture of a dairy water tank that is shaped like a large milk can, but the image is fresh in my mind. The senior guide pays the cab and walks back to the hotel to get his share of our tour money from them. I ask about my computer bag but the woman with the key is not there. They bring it by later. While I am reading in the court yard I start talking to a fellow Canadian from Red Deer, Alberta. Until he retired in 2003 he lived and worked in our home town of Meadow Lake. Small world.
After a late lunch we are not especially hungry so we go for a walk, buy some glucosamine/chondroitin pills at a pharmacy and go to the smoothie place we walked past last night.
We crash early after a long day in the fresh air and water. We feel pretty good, but both take a Robax tablet. I woke up at midnight but went back to sleep after a couple of hours reading.
