El Cañón de Somoto...Sometimes...I'm Lucky Twice

Sometimes... I'm just lucky... and sometimes... I'm lucky twice.

While walking around Somoto I dropped in at a little ice cream store on the town plaza. The girl behind the counter was quite friendly and started asking me about where I was from, what I was doing there, etc.. After a while she suggested that I might like to check out El Cañón de Somoto (The Canyon of Somoto). Supposedly it was a canyon that locals knew about for many years, but it was only opened up as a national park and an adventure destination about 5 years ago.

When I returned to my hotel I inquired if they knew about arranging a tour to the canyon. I was told that a guide to the canyon would pass by the hotel in the morning and I could inquire if there was still space with his tour for the day.

I awoke at about 7am and met the guide Raynel. He said that I was welcome to join his group.

The trip began with a short ride in a 4x4 to the national park. We took a short break for breakfast. We were provided life preservers. Then we began hiking.

We hiked through some small communities then came across this nice overlook of the canyon and the river that runs through it. Then we started to descend into the canyon.

There were 7 others on the trip, some Spaniards and some Nicos (Nicaraguans). I made the group an even 8. Funny how things like that work out sometimes.

We hiked along the banks of the canyon and when we couldn't hike... we floated the river.

There were a few opportunities to jump from the cliffs. But for the most part it was hiking and floating the river.

After about 4 hours of hiking and floating we met up with these lanchas (boats) and the guys paddled us down the river for a while.

Then we hiked out of the canyon back to our 4x4 truck.

It was an amazing day of hiking and floating and just taking in the natural beauty of the canyon.

Check out this video.