It’s not every day that we pass up the opportunity to explore something for ourselves in favour of a guide, but the Cañón de Somoto seemed like a good place to splurge. And we’re glad we did.

Somoto Canyon

The Cañón de Somoto, located 15 km north of Somoto, Nicaragua, is a beautiful 3 km long gorge cut into solid rock by the Rio Coco. At places, the granite ridges are less than 10 m apart. It’s possible to hike along the upper ridge yourself, or even explore the lower reaches, but we found our guide invaluable here.

Our guide, guiding

We booked our tour through the guide recommended by our hotel (Maudiel, cel. 8699 8426), and were given three options: 3 hours, 4 hours, or 5 hours. We chose the longest tour, as it seemed to be the best value at $25 USD per person, versus $20 pp for the 4 hour one. The three hour tour didn’t even go to the bottom of the canyon, so we didn’t bother to learn its cost. The price included return transportation from our hotel and rental of water shoes.

Mike’s stylin’ water shoes… our guide cracked up every time he looked at them

At 8:00 am, our Spanish speaking guide, Maudiel, met us at our hotel and we took a taxi to the “house of the guides.” Once there, we shared a typical breakfast (an extra 40 cordobas, or $1.75 CAD) of gallo pinto, eggs, fried plantain, cheese, and tortillas. We met up with a couple from Spain and Argentina who would be joining us, then took another cab to the canyon entrance.

Somoto Canyon

From there, we walked along and through the riverbed of Rio Tapacali, which has cut itself a small canyon. There were several small caves to poke our heads into along the way.

We continued until it met with the Rio Coco (Central America’s largest river), stopping to check out a small waterfall along the way.

The waterfall

The scenary was spectacular and we were able to document it all through a combination of our waterproof camera case and the guide’s waterproof container. We worked our way down the rivers through a combination of walking along the edge, wading through ankle/knee/waist/chest deep water, and swimming. On many occasions, I would just stop and float and look up at the canyon walls around me.

Wading through the river

Just enjoying the scenery

The highlight of the tour, besides the magnificent canyon we walked and swam through, was the cliff jumping. We started with a small jump… a mere 3 metres or so.

This jump was no problem!

Later, we climbed up onto the canyon wall and wet our feet with a 10 metre jump into the river below. All four of us took the plunge, though not without a little apprehension. Then, Maudiel challenged us to try the 20 m jump that he had been talking about the whole way there. Mike was the first to agree, and after a little more rock climbing he stood shivering (he says it was because he was cold… but I don’t believe him) 20 metres above the water’s surface. With a yell and a loud splash, he earned the applause of everyone on the cliff. He told us he screamed, ran out of air, and still hadn’t hit the water – that’s how high it was.

Mike, jumping off the 20 m cliff.  Can you find him?

Not to be outdone (though it took a little coaxing), I climbed up the 20 m cliff too, and became just the second female in Maudiel’s five year history of guiding to complete the jump.

Oops… I just looked down

Like Mike, I let out an excited “wooo!”, paused, realized I was still only halfway down, and had time for a more frightened “ahhh!” before I hit the water. In an uncharacteristic manner, I even held the right body position and didn’t slap or crash into the water. I surfaced elated. After a quick damage assessment, I discovered I had only lost a contact… which I managed to salvage and return to its rightful place with the aid of a life jacket Mike tossed down.

Big jumps make big splashes!

After climbing back up, we all repeated the 10 m jump (no one else attempted the 20 m), before swimming to the next cliff. There, Mike did a 15 m jump while I enjoyed being a spectator (my left ear was full of water and in some pain from the last small jump, so I decided to sit – or should I say float – this one out).

The tour ended with a 400 m swim, a quick boat ride to the end of the canyon and a 2 km hike back to the guide’s house.

An easy ride back out of the canyon

Our walk back

We arrived there at about 1:45 pm, changed into dry clothes, and headed back into Somoto for some delicious rosquillas (baked corn biscuits).

The tour was something I would wholeheartedly recommend to any traveller wandering through Nicaragua. It was a chilly day though, so plan to have a nice hot chocolate when you’re done.

Just a little cold

Oh… and for all you female travellers out there… try the 20 m jump – you won’t regret it!

Estelí is located on the Pan American highway in the north of Nicaragua near the Honduras border. We skipped over this place the first time through on our way to Managua to meet up with Ashley’s Mom and her boyfriend Terry. When we skipped past it and nearby Somoto the first time, we were about 80% sure that we would be headed back north to Utila and scuba diving, so we weren’t too concerned. Our plans changed, as always, and we won’t be headed back to Utila in the short term, but we are still headed north!

So, was Estelí worth the extra miles it took us to get back to it? Absolutely. In just a short while, Estelí became one of my favourite places in all of Nicaragua, not that we’ve seen the whole country, but still. It’s a small city in the heart of a largely organic farming centre surrounded by mountains, farms, and nature reserves.

Northern Nicaragua.  Click this photo to zoom in!

Probably one of the most outstanding things about Estelí and area, are the people. Everyone is very friendly, almost overwhelmingly so… the likes of which we haven’t seen since the Yucatan in Mexico. Some of its other endearing features include cheap accommodations ($6/night for private rooms), and a good bakery with low low prices (I have to feed my addiction).

In Estelí itself, there are world renowned cigar factories that you can tour, a fresh fruit market, decent street food, and the standard park/cathedral combination. Around Estelí, there’s lots to do as well. If we had more time, I think I I could have easily spent a month or more roaming the lands between Estelí and Somoto, another awesome town just north of Estelí with a beautiful canyon (and its own story that Ashley will tell in a couple of days).

But, we didn’t have the time, because the current plan of the hour is to pass through El Salvador, a small corner of Honduras (twice), and finally arrive in Antigua Guatamala for Semana Santa (holy week, AKA a really big week long party).

I better get back on track, or this post will never end… ah yes, I was talking about what there is to do around Estelí. There are two nature reserves, which are more of a community banded together to protect the lands and water, while carrying on organic farming, and promoting tourism than they are the traditional uninhabited natural park reserve that I’m used to in Canada. Of the two, we chose to go to the Reserva Natural Cerro Tisey-Estanzuela.  We stayed at the Eco-Posada, a restaurant/farm/hotel for two nights. There was no kitchen, but their meals were some of the most delicious that we’ve had, and were reasonably priced. The country side is stunningly beautiful, and we spent the better part of two days just walking around. There is a Mirador (or lookout in English) right next door to the Eco lodge with a beautiful view of the countryside. We also visited the nearby village of La Garnacha, where we walked a couple of short interpretive nature trails, wandered through a gated park area filled with lookouts and stone carvings, ate at the local organic restaurant, and finally visited the cheese store.

The Mirador

There is a cheese factory in La Garnacha that offers tours (we didn’t take the tour, but we did visit the factory briefly). They make cheeses from both goat milk and cow milk in the Swiss tradition and sell it for just over $4 per pound. I hope you pay attention to this next bit, their Swiss cheese is the best cheese I’ve had in Central America. It was absolutely delicious. To be honest, the cheese alone could have been enough to make this place my favourite spot in Nicaragua.

Tasty Cheese Makers

La Garnacha also offers several tours, both walking and on horseback, ranging from $5-$40 each per person. There’s a mountain that can be summited, bat caves to visit, a carved stone cliff, and more. They also offer workshops in cheese making! Everything can be arranged at the artisan office / cheese store.

There are some details that I should mention for anyone planning to visit. First, there’s no English, so you will want to have at least basic Spanish. Everything was well signed, and there were a couple of English pamphlets that we found, but there was no spoken English. Second, it was cold. Very cold. We both slept in our long underwear, and were more than glad to have them with us. Third, the buses were unreliable. They are supposed to run twice a day, once at about 8:30AM, again at 4:00pm. When the 4:00pm bus failed to arrive, we were forced to spend a second night at the Eco-Posada. After we missed the morning bus the next day (or is missed us?), we made inquiries, and discovered that there was another bus stop about 5km to the east where buses go by every two hours. We had a pleasant walk there, and managed to catch a bus at 11:30 AM. The walk was fine for us, but may not be ideal for everyone.

If we had more time, I would have taken part in the cheese making workshop for sure, and visited the other nature reserve, Miraflor, where they offer home stays, horse rentals, and volunteer projects to keep you occupied.

Time to move on

Have you ever passed through a place that you loved at first sight, knowing that you could easily stay a month, but had to move on because of pre-booked travel plans?

Our time in Costa Rica was short as it was mostly a visa run to renew our C-4 visas. We were required to stay 72 hours, but stayed until Mom and Terry had to fly home.

Costa Rica Summary:

Length of Stay: 10 days
Average Cost per Day for Two People: $52.68 CAD
Cities Visited: 5
Distance Traveled: 788 km in 10 automobiles
Days Sick: 0 for Ashley, 0 for Mike
Number of Items Lost: 1 PADI bag with all our divemaster books & slates – stolen while on a bus
Biggest Tourist Traps: Everywhere we went, it was very touristy
Exchange Rate: $1 CAD = 520 Costa Rican Colones

As always, you can check out all our stats on our stats page.

Sunset in Playa del Coco

Our Route:

Nicaragua border – Liberia – Playa del Coco – Monteverde/Santa Elena – Jaco – San Jose – Nicaragua border

Highlights:

• Seeing wildlife like sloths and armadillos
• Monteverde Cloud Reserve
• Canopy Tour with Tarzan Swing

Landscape near Monteverde

Lowlights:

• Getting robbed twice in a week
• The cost of everything… nothing comes cheap here

Monteverde Cloud Reserve

Surprises:

• How dangerous it is – we assumed that since it was the richest country in Central America, it would be the safest… not so!
• This might sound silly, but I pictured the whole country as one big jungle. It’s not.
• They don’t have street addresses.  Anywhere.  You try to find the hostel that’s one block west and two blocks south of the Burger King.
• The buses were really nice here… we didn’t see any chicken buses!
• There’s a lot more English spoken here than in other CA countries.

Mom & Terry, Sunset in Jaco

Lessons Learned:

• You should heed the advice given to you about travelling in specific places.
• Don’t put bags in the overhead compartments of buses.

Fishing at Playa del Coco

Costa Rica Journal – Where Did We Spend Our Time?

Liberia – 1 night
What we did here: Not a heck of a lot. We stopped to break up our travel time enroute to the beach. Our timing was just a little off, as they had a major local festival starting the next day.

Playa del Coco – 2 nights
What we did here: We were still sunburned from a previous beach encounter in San Juan del Sur, so we played it pretty lowkey here. Walked through town and along the beach, played cards with Mom and Terry, and cooked some great meals!

Santa Elena/Monteverde – 3 nights
What we did here: We had a busy time here as there was lots to see and do… ziplining, a night walking tour, and exploring the cloud forest in the Monterverde Cloud Reserve.

Jaco – 2 nights
What we did here: More beach… more relaxation. We played in the warm surf, sent a few postcards home, and I helped my mom go souvenir shopping.

San Jose – 2 nights
What we did here: We explored the parks and downtown on foot, eating some tasty street food. Then we let Mom and Terry treat us to a Chinese food meal-for-four and said our goodbyes to them, before catching our bus back to Nicaragua.

Sunset in Jaco

There’s A LOT to do in Monteverde, Costa Rica. Especially if you’ve got the cash. You can do a canopy tour, rappel waterfalls, hike up mountains, swim beneath waterfalls, ride horses, tour coffee and sugar cane farms, wander (and wonder) through cloud forests, go bird watching (or sloth watching or monkey watching) by day or by night, check out a cheese factory, or visit the insect house, the frog house, the butterfly house, the snake house, or the orchid house.

To give you an idea of the per person costs… park admissions for the reserves cost between $15-18 USD, cheese tours and animal houses were about $10 each, canopy tours were in the $30-50 range, coffee tours and bird watching were about $35-40.

We, on the other hand, don’t have a lot of cash. Luckily, we found a hostel in Santa Elena (which is also called, Monteverde) for only $7 USD per person, breakfast included – which is cheap by Costa Rican standards. Mom and Terry stayed just up the street from us, and we all got together to experience some of what the area had to offer through a few guided tours, despite the cold (the elevation of Monteverde is such that it is significantly colder than other areas of the country… Mike and I are used to 30°C, so temperatures in the low 20’s are quite chilly for us).

In addition to what we did, Mom and Terry did an early morning bird watching tour and an afternoon coffee tour (both of which they really enjoyed).

Heads up, the photos with a big play button in the middle of them are actually movies!  Click to enjoy.

Canopy Tour

Costa Rica is world famous for its ziplines and Monteverde is where it all got started. So not doing a canopy tour was not an option. We booked our tour with a company called Aventura. It cost $35 USD per person and included transportation to and from our hotel, 16 platforms including a Superman line, a 15 m rappel, and a Tarzan swing. With a bit of coaxing, even my mom joined in the fun. The first few lines were to practice braking (we had to brake ourselves by pressing down on the line with our thick leather fortified gloves) and then it was smooth sailing from there. The guides were great, and helped out anyone having troubles. The views were spectacular!

Ziplining

Mom had a little trouble with the braking

The rappel

View from one of the platforms

Mike on the Superman line

My graceful Superman entry

Terry on the Tarzan Swing

 

Night Walking Tour

A lot of the wildilfe in Monteverde is nocturnal, so a night tour just seemed to make sense. We paid $20 USD per person for a tour of Finca Santa Maria, which included transportation, lights, a guide, and a two and a half hour walk through the forest. I must admit, I was a little skeptical about whether the tour would be worth its pricetag, but I was happy to see my doubts fade away. The tour was easy walking and our eagle-eyed guide spotted an owl, a pit viper, a huge tarantula, fireflies, click beetles, may beetles, a huge stick bug, leafcutter ants, tink frogs, a couple of two-toed sloths, a couple of coatimundis, and an armadillo. I think I was most blown away by the armadillo, but the whole experience was really interesting and informative.

Click Beetle

Can you spot the huge stick bug?

Coatimundi

Walking to the Middle of Nowhere

The afternoon of the night tour, Mike and I set out to find the Monteverde Cloud reserve. We figured we could just walk there (or at least part of the way there) and see how pretty of a walk it would be. We set off with the little map we picked up at our hostel. Unfortunately we misread where the bus stop was and headed off in the completely wrong direction.  Luckily for us, the walk had some of the most beautiful vistas we saw while we were there.

Walking through the Reserva Biológica Bosque Nuboso Monteverde

After our failed attempt the day before, Mike and I set out for the Monteverde Cloud Reserve once again. This time, we planned to take a bus there to save our energy for hiking the trails in the reserve. Despite the fact that all the schedules said there was no 7:00 am bus running on Sundays, the seemingly knowledgeable young man at our hostel assured us that there would indeed be a bus. As it turns out, he was wrong and we ended up sharing a cab to the reserve with another traveller for $3 USD per person (instead of the $1.25 USD pp the bus should have cost).

The entrance fee to the reserve was a hefty $18 USD pp. You could hire a guide for another $15 pp, but we opted to explore on our own. The reserve’s workers were very helpful, providing a map of the trails, and a suggested route for the time we planned to spend there.

We spent most of the day wandering the trails (we had the place nearly to ourselves it seemed) and covered nearly every path in the park (about 14 km or so). We brought a picnic lunch of crackers, cheese (we actually found decent cheese made at the Monteverde cheese factory just outside Santa Elena), and salchichon (garlic sausage).

At about 2:00pm, we were ready to head home. There were still no buses running and we couldn’t find anyone else to share a cab with. We decided to walk the 7 km back to Santa Elena, stopping at the cheese factory for some homemade ice cream. We didn’t really see much wildlife (one rodent in the reserve and a lot of insects), but the cloud forest was so impressive we didn’t leave disappointed.

Here’s a sign to get your blood boiling

For those lacking in Spanish language skills, it says “For sale: Turtle Eggs in tomato sauce and more”

Appalling. That photo was taken in Playas del Coco, Costa Rica. The sign was located on the main street in front of a small stand where they also sold ceviches. Every time I walked b , I just couldn’t believe they had such a bold sign right out in the open. It just seemed so wrong.

This is more they type of sign I was expecting to see

Again for those lacking in Spanish it says, “My eggs are not the solution”

I’m not totally naive – I knew that there was a black market for turtle eggs, just as there’s a black market for everything that’s supposed to be an aphrodisiac. Including Viagra. I just didn’t expect to see it so blatantly advertised.

Then a funny thing happened. I sat down to write a post damning all of Costa Rica for their trade in turtle eggs, and I came across this article: http://www.hoax-slayer.com/costa-rica-turtle-eggs.shtml

Turns out harvesting turtle eggs isn’t all bad

To sum it up:

• Turtle eggs are legally harvested on the Ostional beach in Costa Rica as a conservation project which began in 1983
• The Olive Ridley Turtle lays eggs on this beach in groups as large as 300,000 turtles at one time (depending on the time of year)
• The turtles that arrive to the beach later on dig up and smash the eggs that were laid by the early arrivals
• All those smashed eggs breed fungus and bacteria which greatly reduce the amount of hatched turtles
• Up to 1% of the early arrival eggs are harvested
• Harvested eggs are legally sold at regulated prices below that of a chicken egg to discourage poaching
• This legal harvesting has been shown to increase the overall hatch rate
• A formal co-management model between the University of Costa Rica, a community organization called ADIO, and the Ministry of Natural Resources (MINAET) in Costa Rica, was installed to regulate the program. They meet every 5 years to review the program.

Of course this conservation project also has its critics. One of the biggest criticisms being that the supply chain is poorly controlled, and these legally harvested turtle eggs could present a cover for poachers to harvest and sell eggs illegally.

Things aren’t always so black and white. What they’re doing seems to be working, and I guess that’s a good thing. Personally though, I’m not about to run out and eat turtle eggs. They fall into that too darn cute to eat category.

Mike and I consider ourselves to be fairly intelligent human beings.  But we’ve recently come to the realization that we’ve got nothing on the average Central American petty thief.

If you recall, back in September our camera was pickpocketed in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala.  It didn’t matter that we were told not to take anything with us to the fair except for the money we absolutely needed to get through the day.  More specifically, we were told that the money we take should be stuffed into my bra, not left in a pocket.  Being the smart ones that we are, we ignored that bit of advice,  figuring that the camera would be fine in a zippered front pants pocket.  We were wrong.  Some clever fingersmith outsmarted us and got a camera out of the deal.  Lesson learned.  Right?  Well… not quite.

Mike and I were relaxing at the hotel room we shared with my Mom and Terry in Playa del Coco, Costa Rica when there was a knock at the door.  There stood Mom and Terry in only their bathing suits – no shirts, no shoes.  “We were robbed!” my mom explained.    Mom and Terry had left their Merrell sandals, Terry’s shirt, and Mom’s sarong that she purchased in Cozumel earlier this trip sitting on the beach and went for a walk.  A 45 minute walk.  They thought it would be fine.  And, like us with our camera, they were wrong.  You see, every beach we’ve been to in Central America we’ve been given the “watch your stuff” warning.    In fact, at most beaches, we’ve been given the “don’t even take a bag to the beach” warning.  Guess those people giving the advice know what they’re talking about.  Now the lesson should be learned.  But….

A mere four days after the beach incident, we were all on a chicken bus from Monteverde to Puntarenas, en-route to Jaco, Costa Rica.  I’d be lying if I said that we hadn’t been been told on several occasions to never put anything in the overhead compartment of a bus.  Can you guess where this is going?   Since leaving Utila, we were carrying two extra bags that we received as part of our divemaster course.  One was full of food (so wasn’t really an extra bag, as we often carry a food bag with us).  The other was full of divemaster books, slates, and underwater camera enclosure weights that we didn’t really need but figured we should send home with my mom.  We put these bags in the overhead compartment, figuring that they were pretty disposable anyway.  Still, we kept our eyes on them during the crowded trip.  When we got off the bus, the bag with all the divemaster books was gone.  The funny thing is, Mike spent most of the trip trying to figure out how he would say “Hey, that’s my bag.  Give it back!” in Spanish if someone did try to walk off with something of ours.  Once again, we were outsmarted.  Maybe there was something to that advice after all.

So, what have we actually learned from all this?  A few things.

1.  When advice is given to you by locals and other travellers, it is usually warranted.  Listen to it.  Even if it means the inconvenience of carrying your shoes at the beach or holding an extra bag on your lap on the bus.

2.  We felt absolutely no emotion over our dive bag being stolen.  I think that’s a good indication we didn’t need to send it home in the first place.  I guess we are still working on breaking our attachment with stuff.  I would have liked to see the thief’s face when he opened the back to discover that what he probably thought was a laptop was actually a bunch of PADI books.

3. While petty crime is prevalent throughout Central America, it is rampant in Costa Rica.  We were robbed twice in the course of a week.  This kind of took us by surprise, as it’s the wealthiest Central American country.  However, nearly all the travellers that we’ve met that have had problems with crime in Central America have had those problems in Costa Rica… backpacks taken from the storage bins below the bus, bags taken from overhead compartments, thefts on beaches, robberies at gunpoint, etc. etc.  We recently met a local woman in Somoto, Nicaragua that described Costa Rica as a beautiful country, but one that was too dangerous to visit.

Let us know… have you had any problems with crime in Central America?  If so, what happened?

Just about every traveller that we’ve come across who’s been through Costa Rica has had the same thing to say:

Costa Rica was nice, but we only stayed half the time we planned on. It’s really expensive.

It’s not too surprising, as many of the locals we met in Nicaragua had similar things to say:

Costa Rica is beautiful, but it’s expensive, and a bit too dangerous.

Okay, okay. It was starting to sound a lot like what we had heard about Belize before we visited it firsthand. But Belize wasn’t overly expensive. In fact, when all was said and done, it turned out to be cheaper than Mexico, and still well within our daily budget. So I was pretty skeptical about all this price hype.

Sad to say, all the hype was true. Costa Rica is expensive. Dare I say too expensive for us. It all started when we arrived at the border. They have a policy where they do not grant entry visas unless you can prove that you have onward travel tickets. We didn’t have said return tickets, and were stopped at the border on our first attempt through.

Sitting in nomads land, we didn’t have a lot of options. All we had was a Tica bus station selling one way open ended tickets from San Jose, Costa Rica to Managua, Nicaragua for $25 a piece (at least double the price it should have cost using public transportation and without the flexibility of being able to break the trip up over several days and several towns). We bought the tickets because we had no choice, and slipped through the border on our second attempt without issue.

I freely admit it, we didn’t get off to a good start with Costa Rica. But costs kept racking up. Accommodation was a big shock. We had been accustomed to spending somewhat less that $10 a night on average in the rest of Central America. Once we crossed that border, the cheapest accommodations we could find were pushing $30 a night. We may not have minded the hefty accommodation bill so much if it translated into a bit of luxury, but it didn’t. These were the types of places where the showers didn’t work, and there were no toilet seats.

Then the nickle-and-diming started. Every thing you want to do in Costa Rica costs extra. While we were accustomed to spending between $0.50 and $2 to see an art gallery or museum in other countries, the same entrance fee here would be a minimum of $10 per person. That same $10 could buy you entrance to a beach, $18 for entry to a nature reserve for the day, another $10 to see a waterfall, and so on, and so on.

In the end, we limited ourselves a lot, choosing not to pay our entrance fees more often than not. We had originally planned to travel farther south and see more of the country before leaving, but after only 10 days in the country, we decided to cut our losses and use that bus ticket we were forced to buy.

Sunsets were still free at least!