Day 32 (morning) - Villahermosa is mostly an industry town in the middle of the hot flatlands. According to Wikipedia, it's a stopover point between Mexico City and Cancun. Or in my case, between Veracruz and Palenque.

Before heading out to the famous Mayan ruins at Palenque, I noticed in Lonely Planet that there is a worthwhile park/museum/zoo in town named Parque La Venta, and I decided to check it out.

I really don't like the concept of zoos for the lives that animals have to endure when caged up, but my 50 pesos ($4) to enter this one wasn't going to change anything. And I thought it might be interesting to see the more "jungly"-ish animals.

The park actually turned out to be pretty interesting, and I spent a couple hours there. It's part zoo, part path through the woods, part outdoor museum with a plentiful number of large Olmec artifacts along the path.

There was a black panther in a large caged area, which was really freaky because it was making loud hoarse noises, but all I could see were its green eyes glowing against its inky black fur. It was sitting in the shade under an overhang not 5 meters away from me, but it was really hard to see. I stood there imagining it stalking prey (including humans) in the jungle, and a shiver ran up my spine.

The toucan had to be the most ridiculous animal I've seen. I mean it literally looked like it had a fake toucan beak strapped to its head. I just wanted to take it off the poor guy! It stood there moving its eye to look at me and I felt so sorry for it having to go through life with that ludicrous thing attached to it's face. I suppose it's normal though and he felt perfectly fine.

There is a large hemispherical aviary that you could enter with a large number of species flying around, plus an underground dark section with big fat bats hanging from the ceiling and some sloth like creature. And on the path in the thick jungle large animals the size of small dogs kept running across in front of me. The information sign called them badgers and said they were friendly. Must not be the same as the MEAN badgers we had growing in Wisconsin!

The Olmec sculptures were interesting, and at the end of the walk is a cage with the "biggest predator in the world", which is a mirror behind some bars. Cute!