Off To Waspam!

by Andre of facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003625390027 on April 3, 2012

The adventure continued as I now found myself on the northeast side of Nicaragua, in a beautiful town named Waspam. We took a 3 hour flight from Managua, Nicaragua to Waspam, almost making a coast-to-coast journey from the west coast to the east. The journey itself was incredible! We flew on a small 15 passenger plane (at least that’s how many we had) called ‘La Costeña’, that flew rather low giving us the chance to appreciate the breathtaking landscapes across Nicaragua.

Now if, or when you fly one of these, let me warn you that they can give quite a turbulence kick. I tell you this because it had me concerned, but don’t worry it’s completely normal as it is a smaller plane. We flew over mountains, forests, colorful divisions of lands & very unique designs on fields that captured my attention. I believe they were crops or farm lands but they had such distinct features that they reminded me of crop circles. Excitement filled me as we descended, that’s until I noticed where we were going to land!

As we approached our landing site, I scanned out the terrain below looking for the runway, yet all I could see was thick forests & grasslands. I kept searching & of course there was no runway, we were landing on pure earth! It was a bit of an adrenalin rush even though I’ve done this before. What made it more nail biting this time was the fact that the grass here was thicker & looked bumpy, not to mention this landing site was very narrow, just missing the huge trees on each side by a few feet. So as we were descending, I was both anxious & excited.

My heart ascended to my throat when suddenly BANG! We landed! The whole plane was shaking as it ran across the bumpy greens. I wasn’t sure if I was still alive! After my life flashed before my eyes, the plane started slowing down as its engine roared. “We’re alive,” I yelled out once the plane came to a complete stop & to wonder if I had to go through that again, lol. Well, I got to admit it was mega-exciting! We were picked up by some locals who gave us a tour around Waspam which happened to be right off the famous ‘Rio Coco’ literally translated ‘Coconut River’ which is the river that divides Nicaragua from Honduras & flows into the Caribbean Sea. That was yet another radical experience to come!

The people in Waspam are kind, humble & warm not to mention energetic. They seemed very active, always doing or working on something & they love to talk. The majority spoke Spanish, a dialect called Miskito (which might have become a language now) & a few even spoke English. I had quite a few of them come up to me asking me all kinds of questions which I happily answered. As for I had questions myself which they eagerly answered too. “So, when are we taking a tour on Rio Coco?” I finally asked, not knowing what kind of answer I would get & dude was I surprised! Sometimes you just have to ask, you know. Although fear can stop us at times, most of the times the answers we get are not as bad as we think them to be. And sometimes they can be surprising. =-)

That was precisely the case here as my Rio Coco adventure began which I will continue in my following article.