SPENDING ten days sleeping in a rudimentary hut bereft the most basic facilities is not everybody's idea of a holiday.

Getting up to work with farm hands in sesame fields dragging a Yukka plant strapped around your waist makes it sound even less appealing.

But 64-year-old June Plymen had tears in her eyes when she explained how much she loved her visit to Nicaragua and how much she was missing the family she had lived cheek-to-jowl with.

June, of Macclesfield, said: "It was fantastic, a unique and very, very special experience.

"The people are so welcoming and warm, and they want to know so much about our lives.

"Nicaraguans are superb poets and musicians and love any excuse to dance and sing.

"They made us feel part of the family."

It could hardly be compared to the Hilton Hotel - no electricity or running water, it was a ten minute walk to the nearest spring, which also doubled as the bath.

But June would not have swapped her time with Ulises Romano and his family for a stay at the Taj Mahal.

She said: "We got an appreciation of their lives and about being a subsistence farmer.

"We learnt about Fair Trade and the importance of the co-operative movement.

"And it is clear that without it the farmers would go to the wall because it gets them a better deal than they would get on the world market."

June flew out with an organisation called the Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign and was based with an English pal in Achuapa at a co-operative farm, miles from anywhere.

June, who is retired but used to work for the county council, said: "Their house had a tiled roof and a main room with a dirt floor, where the family lived, and the only modern equipment was a sewing machine.

"Food comprised of maize ground in the kitchen to make tortillas, rice, beans and vegetables from their small plot; and whatever else they could gather.

"They also owned two horses, a foal, cow, pig and hens."

June was supposed to be working in the sesame fields, but the necessary rains had not come so she had to find other tasks.

These included childminding, lugging sand from the riverbed to the farm where Ulises was making an extension and helping with the cooking.

June said: "The children only have school half a day every other day, and we spent a lot of time with them.

"They followed us around everywhere, and were amazed because they had never seen white people before.

"It was wonderful, they were so, so friendly, and teaching them games was great fun."

Now a bunch of kids in Achuapa are playing noughts and crosses and cats cradle.

But why did June chose Nicaragua?

She has been a Solidarity Campaign member almost since it was launched during the 1980s.

Its aim was to support the socialist Sandista government.

June, a life-long activist, said: "The Sandistas began an awesome policy of building schools, trying to combat illiteracy and battling against poverty.

"They built very successful co-operative movements in the countryside, and began to open medical centres across the country.

"But it disrupted American business interests and President Reagan made his famous comment 'I'm going to make them bleed' before funding a bloody civil war which crippled the country."

Now the country is one of the poorest in Latin America, which is why the Campaign's work is more important now than ever before.

n For more information about the campaign, contact the Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign, 129 Seven Sisters Road, London, N7 7QG.