Jardin Botanico y Zoologico

            Today was our long excursion day and our Professor decided to take us to see the Botanical Gardens and Zoo in Havana.  We were supposed to go a couple of weeks ago, but that was when our driver was hung over, or on another job, nobody knows.  Anyways, I have realized that I have to keep my expectations very low and not assume anything about our trips so that I am pleasantly surprised when we do go and it exceeds my expectations.

            We started at the botanical garden and I was amazed at how big it was.  It covers three square kilometers and is divided up into zones based on continental regions.  The first zone that we went through was Cuba’s and had all of the native species of trees that grow on the island.  Next came Central and South America, followed by North America, Africa, Asia and Australia.  Interestingly, Europe was the only region that had no plant life represented.  I don’t know if it was because those trees can’t flourish here, or some other reason.  The last thing that we got to see was called the “Palmera”, which was a giant expanse covered with over 200 different species of palm trees from all over the world.  I found out that the national tree of Cuba is the “palma real”, or royal palm, so you do learn something new everyday.

            After our tour of all the beautiful trees, we went to the Parque Zoológico Nacional, better known as a zoo to all my gringo readers.  If you have ever been to The Wild Animal Kingdom in Orlando, Florida and have gone on the safari ride, this was exactly like that.  We rode into the park that resembled an African safari on a converted public transportation bus and drove through the entire wide expanse.  I was surprised by the fact that all of the animals were so very close to the road.  In fact, if the bus driver hadn’t picked up speed driving away then a giraffe would have stuck his head right through a window.  One of the main attractions of the park is the fact that it is home to 18 lions and all of them occupy about an acre of land.

            On the way back, we got to chat with our taxi driver, who, apparently, is a hydraulic engineer who worked in France for a little while and Colombia for three years.  He told us that the money that he made while he was in Colombia he used to buy a car so that he could become a taxi driver because they make more money than engineers do in this country.  This blew my mind, because a job that most Americans would look down upon, that of a taxi driver, is what highly educated and knowledgeable people in Cuba have to settle for.  I asked him if thought that the economic change that Cuba is undergoing will change things and he said that he doubted that anything was going to change in the next five years.  It was a revealing insight into Cuban life.