A Field Trip to Ecoparque

Tuesdays are the day we have a cleaning company come clean our apartment here in Buenos Aires, which is awesome. However, they come randomly anytime between 10 and 6 on Tuesdays. I have started to put a sign on the door when the baby's napping because he's in a phase where he will only nap in his crib, so I really don't want that time interrupted. After that, though, I try to get out of the apartment so we're not in the way when they're cleaning. We've started to make a fun "field trip" of it. This week we decided to go to Ecoparque.

When we say Ecoparque, the locals just refer to it as the zoo or the Palermo Zoo. It is another huge ecological park that USED to be a zoo, but isn't anymore. We learned this is a very important distinction. They have a bunch of animals that just wander around. Some of these animals include peacocks, elephants, maras, hippos and so much more. It's very focused on preserving and finding animals that have been abused or abandoned and taking care of them. After the baby woke up from his nap, we packed up all of our necessities and took the train to Ecoparque. Because we're taking the train, I ended up taking the smaller stroller. I've talked previously about how I love our UPPAbaby Vista, but its too bulky for the craziness of public transit.

The front of the park in Palermo is absolutely gorgeous. We first stumbled upon a Mara. It's like a smaller carpincho, which is a capybara in English. They kind of look like a cross between, like a large rabbit and a tiny deer. There are also ducks and peacocks that wander around everywhere. They just kind of wander around and run into the pathways. They have food they can eat everywhere. My daughter chases them sometimes, but we are very careful no lot let her touch them.

We went straight to the playground and carousel first thing. I'm super happy we did this first because then the kids were nice and worn out, and able to focus as we walked around the rest of the park.

We were able to see a bunch of animals today. The giraffes were out and were front and center in their enclosure, which was first for us. We also saw a large group of flamingos, llamas, and ostriches.

This is an old zoo with a lot of really old and interesting architecture. I love being able to walk around and learn about the history of them as we walked around looking at the animals.

We were super fascinated with the Andean condor that they have. It is a massive bird they is assume was around 60 years old when they found it and that was a while ago. Meaning, it's a very old condor that can't be released back into the wild anymore.

My daughter also loves the tapir here, which is an interesting animal with the shape of a pig but with a trunk.

One of the things I love about the parque is that they are really good at directing traffic to where they want you to go to keep you from staying in the park and overwhelming the animals for too long. We continued enjoying the architecture as we were directed out of the park.

This has become one of our favorite field trips and will continue to go while we are here. If you are in Buenos Aires, I cannot recommend it enough.