On Saturday we had a much needed break and went into
Asuncion and saw the beautiful botanical garden, natural history museum, and
zoo. We first started out at the
botanical garden which is owned by the city of Asuncion and grows all of the
plants and trees that they plant all around the city and in the parks. The cool thing about the garden was that they
put it “inside” of a forest so instead of clearing all of the trees (which is
normal here in Paraguay) they just cleared the ones the needed to and the rest
are providing shade to the seedlings and plants. Another interesting thing was that they grow
all of their own seed crops so the tree seeds are collected from the property,
planted, and cared for until they are ready to be transplanted into their new
homes. They also use and make all of
their own compost for the beds and bags they plant into. The nursery was so beautiful with all of the
different trees and beautiful flowers. I
think it would be great if some cities do this in the US because it is a great
way to provide all of the aesthetic beauty for a much lower cost than buying
everything individually. The also had a
huge medicinal garden but unfortunately it was closed since it was Saturday.
The
next stop was to the natural history museum.
The museum was very similar to the one that I had already visited but
this one had a little bit more money because things were actually slightly
organized and behind glass so we saw many animal specimens and learned a little
bit more about some of the archeological facts and I am slowly beginning to
pick up reading in Spanish which is great!
At this point in the field trip it began to rain but we still decided to
go to the zoo because it was just sprinkling.
We went to the zoo which cost 5 mil Guaranis which is about $1.10. The zoo itself was a rather large space but
was sad because it didn’t seem like they had a lot of money for anything
really. We first started out down the “path”
and saw things like chickens, goats, etc and were getting worried about the “zoo”
before we started seeing other more “zoo-like” animals. The zoo had many beautiful animals ranging
from Paraguayan bird species to many different monkeys, cats, jaguars, and
evidently had a snake exhibit. The sad
thing was that many of the cages were just concrete and way too small for all the
animals and they didn’t really even have any materials for them to play with
and use. Many of the larger cats were
just pacing back and forth and you could just tell they were so stressed out
which was really sad. Many of the
animals also seemed sick and some even had physical injuries and were limping
around. Also there wasn’t very much
signage in front of the animals to learn about them so you really didn’t know
what anything was. Also it started
POURING about half way through the zoo and we all got soaked (thank goodness
for a waterproof camera!) so we had to cut our tour short. I think overall we had a great time but just
wished the zoo had more money to take better care of the animals and we thought
it would be nice if they had some help making some educational material. Below you should see some pictures of the
zoo and botanical garden.
Also one of the current PCV in Paraguay had a baby fox
brought to her house because they had killed the mom that was eating their
chickens and they thought she would be able to take care of it so she met us
and brought it to the zoo. You should be
able to see some pictures of the beautiful baby fox! (zoro!)
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