Chilean National Zoo- Environmental

We woke up around 9:30 because the phone went off in our room alerting us in Spanish “has ganado la lotería nativa chilena” or “You’ve won the Chilean national lottery!”. We were obviously mad when we found out they were trying to scam us. It was apparently a fun prank that the hotel staff enjoyed to play on foreigners that had no idea what was going on. After we woke up, it was time for breakfast. Joey was still feeling sick due to the food poisoning and didn't come down with us to breakfast. Nonetheless, we all piled our plates with hash browns and pancakes, feeling bad for Joey, chowed down. Considering this was some of the only real food we ate since the bad airplane food, we ate as if we were hungry dogs. Finally, once we had finished breakfast we had some time to kill before we went to the zoo, and we decided to explore around our hotel. There were many restaurants around our Hotel Boutique Castillo Rojo including Cablito, a restaurant serving traditional Chilean food and Laminga a luxury seafood restaurant.

After we were done with our little adventure at our hotel, we decided that it was time to head on over to the zoo. We hopped in our Audi, managing to arrive at the zoo right as it was opening at ten o’clock. The scene wasn’t drastically different from some of the zoo’s we see in America. The Chilean National Zoo had some vendors selling different zoo merchandise, from stuffed animals to food. There was only one snack bar though, which led to some problems in trying to buy some food. We waited in line, for what felt like hours. Finally, when we decided what we wanted to order, the people manning the small snack bar decided it was time to go on break. But we didn’t mind, due to the fact that the snack bar was wide open, and nobody cared if you snached a couple candy bars on the way to the exhibits. The animals were amazing, as they varied from elephants to five white tiger cubs. The Chilean National Zoo is home to over 150 different species and we set out to see them all.

The front entrance of the zoo

Penguin At the Chilean National Zoo

The zoo was crowded during the middle of the day. People were lined up against the walls of the exhibits. As the day continued, we found a zookeeper who was having trouble lifting a heavy wheelbarrow of food for the animals. We decided to help the old zookeeper with the heavy load just out of kindness. This in turn paid off well, because he gave each one of us a free voucher to a tour inside of an exhibit. There, we met the same zookeeper, who told us his name was Roy. Feeling satisfied, we began to make our way out the zoo, when Roy yelled back at us, “Hey, where are you guys going! I didn’t call you guys up just to say thanks!, and besides, I still want to waste an hour giving a tour!” This caught us by surprise, The tour itself was fun. Roy seemed that he was giving us a tour only to have an excuse for not doing his actual job, but we didn’t have anything against him for that. We were allowed to see the penguin exhibit and the monkeys from a distance, but that was all. Obviously, he didn’t want to have to explain to his boss why there was a lawsuit. Much to our disappointment, we were not allowed to hop into the lion pit. After our “tour” was finished, it was almost closing time for the zoo. It was four o’clock now and we were all tired. We told Roy, our new zookeeper friend, goodbye and jumped into our Taxi to go eat dinner. We went to La Bodeguilla de Cristóbal. The food was exquisite. We had a couple of different courses, but the best by far was the papas bravas, which was cooked to perfection. After we had finished our dinner, we decided to go back to our hotel.

After dinner, we returned to our hotel we decided to roam around and explore the streets around our hotel to become more familiar with the area. We stumbled upon the park Plaza Camilo Mori where we enjoyed the nice view. The walking however helped us build quite the appetite, and we searched for a cheap restaurant to grab a quick snack. We found a small restaurant called Beppo Bistro where we grabbed a small bite. After we decided to keep exploring which we did for the next few hours. Matt almost lost the group when we turned a corner and he was looking the other way, snapping a photo. He quickly found us though and we returned to our hotel to sleep.