Sunday Afternoon at the Zoo, pt. 1

I spent the first week staying mostly indoors, only slowly inching out into my new neighborhood bit by bit. But by the sixth day I was restive and fed up with my bunker so I walked to the zoo....

Hope Gardens is one of the few "attractions" in what is otherwise my non-descript suburban neighborhood. It's a large park, built by imperial urban planners in the late 1800s as a place of leisure for the growing city's middle classes. It has a zoo, conservatory, pond, and other parky attractions . As such, it's very similar in size and function St. Paul's Como Park. My Jamaica guidebook, which usually has spot-on descriptions of things, states that "although the gardens have been in steady decline for some decades and are now in somewhat of a sad state,... the spacious lawns and towering palms provide lovely respite from the urban jungle." True.


It was about a forty-five minute walk to the park (I had to find it), and a like amount of time exploring the expansive Hope Gardens before I actually found the zoo (although once here I was also taking time to smell the roses, etc.) Here's a typical shot of one of the park's more scenic sides. Note the Blue Mountains in the back.


Here's some rows of flowers which one can walk through if one feels so inclined.


A nice mahogany tree -- quite big. Note the fella relaxing to the side.

All of this was quite nice, but was merely a prelude to my afternoon's main entertainment of a bona-fide zoo. Again, my guidebook was instrumental in letting me know what to expect:

"The frankly pathetic, ironically named hope zoo, is home to a motly crew of disenchanted monkeys, lions, tropical birds and other unhappy creatures. Visitiors are apt to marvel more at the sad state of the surroundings than at the wonders of the animal kingdom."

Again, the guidebook did not disappoint. Come with me for a tour, not of the animal kingdom, but of what chronic underfunding in a debt-stricken country nets you.

To be Continued...