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ZOO
When Jeff worked on the cruise ship that stopped at Puerto Vallarta (PV) once a week, he would often spend his off-time exploring the city and surrounding area. There were two places outside of PV that he wanted to revisit and take us along. One place was the village of Yelapa. This is a coastal town that can only be reached by boat. The other place was El Eden, a lush jungle area where two movies had been filmed - Elizabeth Taylor’s ‘The Night of the Iguana’ and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ‘Predator’.
Jeff remembered a waterfall, a tiny craft tequila distillery, and a zoo located in the El Eden area. Jeff found a taxi driver willing to hang out with us for the day. Since all three places were close together and even on the same road, the driver agreed to take us to all three for a reasonable price.
Our first stop was the Zoológico de Vallarta (Zoo). The zoo was not quite what I expected, although I can't really tell you what I expected. We had been to the magnificent San Diego Zoo just last December. It wasn't fair to compare the two zoos. The San Diego Zoo is considered to be one of the best zoos in the world. This zoo was not in that league. While the San Diego Zoo was rapidly converting to cageless displays, this zoo was still in the old-fashioned caged world. Still, the animals were clean, and the jungle setting was pleasant and cool.
Upon arrival, our bags were checked to ensure we didn't bring food to feed the animals. Then you could buy a bag of food if you wanted to feed the animals. At first, I thought it was just a clever money-making scheme.
The bag that the food comes in has instructions on what foods to feed to what species. It contained a variety of pellets and lots of carrot sticks. I didn't buy a bag because I didn't think it was a big deal, that is, until Teri was having a blast feeding the animals with her bag of food.
All of the animals recognized the food bags. They fully understood that you were there with handouts, and each species showed you how they preferred to be fed. The monkeys wanted their morsel placed into their hands. The hippos just sauntered over to the ledge and opened their mouths as wide as they could. You tossed their snack right on top of their humongous tongues. When they thought that they had a big enough load, they shut their mouths and swallowed. The Ostriches approached, fluffed their feathers a bit, and then if you were too stupid to know that you were supposed to feed them, approached the stone fence and pecked the fence to tell you, "drop it off right here.” Hamsters, ducks, parrots, etc., all squawked, chittered, screamed, and honked, demanding their fair share.
Of course, Wanda and I went back and bought a bag of food. Really! I was mesmerized by it so much that I didn't take enough photos of this interaction.
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