Belize Zoo

Last week I visited the Belize Zoo with my friend KC. We had talked about going for a while but finally had a free afternoon when we were together in Belmopan so decided to grab a bus there. The zoo was formed almost thirty years ago by an American woman. A crew had come to Belize to film a nature documentary and afterwards they were unsure of what to do with all the animals they now had capture and domesticated. It was decided they couldn’t be released so this woman decided to open a zoo to share Belize’s many exotic animals with everyone. I read this is the best zoo in the Americas south of the United States and was definitely impressed. The zoo only has animals found in Belize and all the inhabitants were either born in captivity, orphaned, or confiscated as illegal pets. Most of the exhibits feel like they are in the middle of the jungle with lots of trees and greenery both inside and outside the large enclosures. We were even amazed by some of the animals outside of the cages just wandering around in nature including some huge iguanas and an armadillo. There also are monkeys loose but we never saw them. Other animals include the tapir (called a mountain cow here), scarlet macaws, the largest eagles in the world, all kind of different cats, crocodiles, and something that looked like a wart hog. Most of the animals I had never heard of but they were all fascinating. One of the most amazing was the jaguars. If you’ve been religiously reading my blogs, you’ll remember that KC and I went on a jaguar hunt in the world’s first jaguar reserve but only found scratch marks on a tree and paths made by some type of animal. This was our chance to see a jaguar and boy did he pose for us. They have three jaguars at the zoo but there was one that seemed especially friendly and photogenic. He was in a large enclosure but came to the fence and was only a few feet away from us. I posted some pictures from the zoo including our favorite jaguar.