In a place like Ecoparque Aluxes in Palenque, you may watch the jungle animals in an animal park without being the reason for their imprisonment and suffering. The animals there are rescued ones.
Apparently, only those animals who could not be released back into the wild are kept for public display. So this is your chance to see the dwellers of the jungle from a short distance: jaguars, ocelots, macaws, monkeys, crocodiles, giant parrots, flamingos and many others. The entrance price of 100 pesos is affordable and for a good cause!
I guess jaguars and dwarf leopards are the biggest attraction for most of the visitors. It is so strange that they resemble ordinary cats so much - the same paws, just bigger, the same manner to stretch and roll on their backs, the same expressions in their eyes - watching jaguars we thought a lot of our dear black cat Nori.
Howler monkeys were the species we were really happy to see in Aluxes. Two years ago, surfing the internet, we discovered the Nosara Refuge for Wildlife, where monkeys who suffered electrocutions from unisolated electrical transformers are being taken care of and rehabilitated. We felt bad that humans go for the cheapest option while constructing the power lines and that the monkeys are the ones to suffer. My Christmas present ever since has been the 'virtual adoption' of a howler monkey in Nosara offered by SIBU Sanctuary and the Nosara Refuge for Wildlife.
Then there are crocodiles... We have seen crocodiles in Africa, but never so close!
Some animals reminded us a lot of ourselves:
Me waiting at a bus stop: "Should I wait another 5 min or take an uber?"
Walking trough Ecoparque Aluxes may take you around 1,5 - 2 hours but the place is so nice - if we hadn't been there rather late, we would have stayed even longer on the river bank overlooking an island with spider monkeys.
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