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Published: November 20th 2018
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Today is the ‘Day of the Revolution’. I guess we should have known that this would be an important day since every town and city we have visited so far has had a very important street named ‘20 November’!
We set off towards the town square. We can hear a brass band playing just beyond. There is a long procession of school kids marching in the road, a brass band and finally some people in traditional Mexican dress on horseback, in fact, the first we have seen wearing sombreros!
After the parade has finished, we make our way to the colectivo station. We get into a mini bus bound for the ruins but get off at the EcoPark. It’s a bit of a mini zoo but it takes in animals and, where possible, reintroduces them to the wilds. Many of these animals have been confiscated from poachers or traffickers and are in pretty bad shape when they arrive.
We seem to be the only visitors right now as the tour buses don’t set off until noon. A 1.5km circuit has been paved around the park so it’s pretty easy to find our way around. It would be a
lovely walk where it not for the humidity. We are seriously finding it quite hard to tolerate.
We start off in a parrot house, moving on to tortoise, turtles and crocodiles. There is a large manatee in a lake. We see it slowly making its way from one side to the other like an animated sandbank, but it’s behind a tree so hard to photograph.
After watching the antics of some spider monkeys, the path leads us into the forest. We are warned not to stray from the path due to snakes...errr, what makes them think that the snakes won’t come onto the path?
There are a few wild cats: black jaguar, spotted jaguar, ocelots to name but a few, housed in glass fronted cages. Frankly the caged areas do look rather small and the animals are pacing but at least they will make it back into the wild at some point.
Now we are in the crocodile section - large lakes house these creatures which might otherwise have ended up as handbags. There are fenced off paths and bridges over the lakes to take us around these sections safely.
Finally we arrive at a
walk-through aviary before ending our trip in an open parrot enclosure with a thatched roof. The parrots are very vocal. Their wings have been clipped so they cannot leave their perches, but we assume they arrived here in that state?
We make our way back to the road where we choose the shade of a large tree to wait for a colectivo. It doesn’t take long as the road to the ruins is a very popular route. We ask to be dropped at the ADO bus terminal so that we can withdraw cash from the ATM. Here we are met by two men with automatic shotguns. There are notes spread out on the floor and they are guarding it and the man who is attempting to mend the machine. They indicate that it won’t be fixed anytime soon! :-(
We return to our room. We had planned on an afternoon dip but it looks like the hotel pool is having a clean. We settle for a shower and a cool down under the air con.
Tonight we have musicians in the square again. They are just getting started as we sit on a terrace enjoying our evening
meal. Their repetoir appears to comprise 8-bit music from 1970s video arcade games. Unlike the busker that was playing for us yesterday, however, we cannot pay them to go away. :-)
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