Panaca – A Hot Adventure!
By ·Two themes last with you throughout your Panaca experience:
* Heat
* Walking
No matter what you do you will never escape either one or both of these recurring elements.
The fee at the door is $15 per person with a slight discount for the child. This only includes the entrance to the park and the shows. For each additional animal ride or interaction you are charged. The fees are nominal $1 – $2. However, considering that each family has two kids or more and they want TO DO EVERYTHING you can easily spend over $150 for the day. Not a cheap day trip.
The park is located in San Mateo on the way to Jaco, in the Central Valley of Costa Rica about 1.5 hours from San Jose. This area of Costa Rica is known for its intense heat and dryness. If you’re mentally prepared for it, it’s not a big deal. But since I don’t go to this area often and from my prior experiences of animal parks being rather small and shady, let’s just say my son and I were so not ready for it!
The park’s central theme is to educate about domestic animals and livestock. Two categories of animals that go unnoticed by most people, or rather we take them for granted because everyone in Costa Rica either has a dog, a cow or a chicken. So, the idea truly intrigued me since I really don’t know much about these animals.
To start off with the parking lot is a good kilometer walk from the first thing you will see is the bovine exhibit. Each exhibit has 30 min shows to entertain you while you relax from the heat and the long walks. Since the majority of the people visiting here would be families, I would have expected an engaging show. Instead, we were shown different cows from around the world with a couple of adult-only volunteer acts that barely kept me awake. So you can understand how little it did for my five year old.
In between each exhibit (cow, dog, pig, and horses) are the animals. First there are sheep, cows, water buffalo, pigs, dogs, horses, etc… You can feed each animal, ride a buffalo, ride a horse, and milk a cow. This can add up rather quickly without you even knowing it and take up about ten seconds so that the kid is on to the next paying attraction.
Our next venture was the doggy show. There is a huge exhibit of pedigree dogs who are housed in teeny tiny cages, but do put on a cute show. Afterwards, you can walk each dog for $2 on a leash in a teeny tiny green area for no more than five minutes. Since, I wasn’t going anywhere near another dog, we’ve got a billion in the residential where I live, we jetted to the next exhibit.
The Pigs! Again, we added an extra 500 meters to the walk in the scorching heat. My son was barely coherent as we slomped down a hill and crawled up a rocky hill to see the swine. The staff was extremely helpful and friendly and almost overly concerned for our well-being, yet they have completely neglected to do so for the animals.
I know absolutely nothign about pigs, and quite frankly don’t want to learn too much. However, any amatuer could see that they were full on suffering. Their little cages were dirty, stinky and full of shit. The pigs were literally frothing at the mouth from dehydration and probably starvation. It was such a sorry sight that I couldn’t pull my son away fast enough. The show wasn’t too start for another hour and the staff kept on begging us to stay.
Mumbling from my practical heatstroke, I asked where the last exhibit- Horses – was. He pointed down. Gratefully, a horse and buggy which was part of the amusement, was standing by ready to take us for a fee. Instead of going for a joyful ride around the pig station, I commanded us to go the horses.
This was a good kilometer, maybe more, down a hill with zero sun coverage. Let’s just say it was the best two bucks I’d ever paid. And my son was thrilled and even more thrilled when I told him we’re about to leave, cause he’s been begging me to go home.
The horse station was great fun for two reasons:
1. They really did have a wonderful selection of pure breds and even a zebra thrown in for good measure.
2. We could see the exit which was a one kilometer walk down hill.
Maybe if they had a little tram or shuttle to take you from one activity to the next it wouldn’t have been as tiresome and exhausting as it was. Maybe if they actually cared for the animals they were exhibiting it wouldn’t have been as dissappointing. So my overall recommendation: if you’re going to go, make sure it’s an overcast day and have lots of extra change with you so your kids can enjoy the full experience.
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0 Comments
June 30th, 2009 at
Oh, I am so sorry for the pigs. We humans really know how to make animals suffer. That is quite a pricey day out. Sorry it wasn't the best of times.