CGSwans flies north for the winter

First of all, thank you very much for typing up your reviews. I've truly enjoyed the 4 write-ups that you have posted...keep them coming and stay safe!

Secondly, in the spring 2014 issue of Zoo Grapevine magazine there is a 7-page set of reviews (written by Tim Brown) of Vasco Da Gama Aquarium, Lisbon Zoo and Lisbon Oceanarium. I thought that I'd quote a few sections to add to your already stellar reporting.

Apparently the Vasco Da Gama Aquarium "is one of only a dozen or so aquariums around the world to still operate from its original site for over a hundred years". There is mention of an indoor pool for South African Fur Seals that is "stark and uninspiring", as well as a Loggerhead Turtle exhibit that "is not only equally uninspiring but far too shallow" and the Amphibian Room is "almost laughably homemade". The very long and detailed review goes on to offer a lot of praise towards the aquarium, including the Invertebrate Gallery and the Portuguese Marine Gallery with its "40 small-to-medium-sized tanks (that) embrace not only the western coast of Portugal but also Madeira and the Azores". This section sees "the unusual aquarium fish species fall thick and fast" and overall the review ends by stating that "this aquarium is something of a quirky treasure house".

Lisbon Zoo is much more commonly visited by European zoo enthusiasts but nevertheless the magazine review recalled words that were repeated on this thread. Apparently there was an old, dark, rusty baboon enclosure where the youngsters "could leave the cage and gambol around the visitors" but that was replaced by "a more modern but still functional large cage". The Reptile House is described as "one of the worst examples of these places I have ever seen" due to the "totally unrealistic mock rock served up cave by cave." There is also mention of the callitrichid enclosures behind a water moat, a 1927 "Monkey Town" with Japanese Macaques, and the fact that "many smaller types of mammal are missing, but as an ABC collection meeting public expectations Lisbon's zoo has more than most". The length of the visit was 7 hours and apparently the zoo had a pet cemetery.

Anyway, I thought that those excerpts would be of some interest. Keep on rockin' Europe.

 

Indeed, and in a very good exhibit that might be the most recent major investment (major for Lisbon - it's not lavish by Northen European or American standards). So good I didn't see them.

 

I had forgotten about the monkey village. I don't understand what it is about Japanese macaques that they are so often consigned to concrete pits. A terrible enclosure that should be replaced, historic or not.

As mentioned I would have valued the Portuguese gallery at VdeG more had I known what I was looking at. Whilst the Amphibian Room was certainly no frills I don't know that 'laughably homemade' is overly fair.

 

Zoo #5 - Lisbon Oceanarium, Portugal, 19/03/2017

An excellent aquarium. My run-through here is going to be quite brief, as was my visit itself as I was feeling off-colour. But the fact I only spent less than two hours here in no way underplays the quality of the place. I actually don't linger long at aquaria in general, as they can be a bit same-same after a while. I made the mistake of visiting on a Sunday (an artefact of feeling too poorly to go out to Sintra, so I did that on the Monday instead), and my first go around was blighted by screaming children and very pushy adults. I thought Japanese kids were loud, but they have nothing on Portuguese kids. Thankfully I went around again after leaving for lunch and it was much quieter.

To kick things off Oceanario has two of the best seabird exhibits I've ever seen. I appreciated how they use the tendency of the birds to avoid flying into the dark corridors to create an open walk-through aviary setting; this is particularly valuable for the flock of inca terns. The mock rock is also of the highest standard; it's not a half-hearted attempt to look like they were trying, but actually an attempt to get the highest level of verisimilitude they could. And it works. These exhibits make up two corners of the more or less square building, and the other two are for sea otters (the only mammals here) and a top view of a tropical marine tank. The theming in the latter doesn't make much sense: it's a rainforest garden over a reef tank, when mangroves would be more appropriate.

Another detail I liked here - as well as the sea otter and tropical marine fish exhibits that make up the other two corners of the building - was that they had used glass panels backing onto the main tank, thus giving the underwater views found later in the aquarium for these exhibits the impression of much greater depth. Indeed, in the case of the penguin tank I didn't realise that's what I was looking at, rather than another view into the big tank, until a penguin dived into view.

The main tank here is basically the same as main tanks everywhere, with a mix of sharks, rays and bony fish from reef and tropical pelagic environments. But it has a large sunfish (I'd been surprised at how small they were in Tokyo and Osaka; turns out they must just have been younger individuals), barracuda and a manta ray, so there are some excellent species to see. This tank would be an appropriate new home, I think, for Vasco de Gama's benighted loggerhead turtle.

The smaller tanks surrounding the Oceanarium are exclusively marine except for a room for amphibians - the vivaria are of an excellent standard but signage was poor. Instead of signs for each tank there were flip cards along the wall, and I couldn't be bothered going through them. The smaller marine tanks mostly follow the conventional formula - giant octopus, jellyfish, mangroves, reefs etc - but there are a couple of deep cuts as well, including a tank for Southern Australian fish (familiar to me but no doubt a rarity here in Europe) and weedy sea dragons (ditto). And I saw white-spotted jellyfish for the first time: surely the most beautiful species out there.

Lisbon is a little off the main circuit in Europe, unfortunately, but Oceanario pips Osaka as the best aquarium I've ever been to, largely on the strength of its superior small habitat tanks. Europeans should jump on cheap flights if they get an opportunity and come visit. And it's a relatively shorter flight than most European destinations for Americans too. And do it before September, if you have a chance.

The aquarium features a temporary exhibition hall. I'm not sure I like that for displays of living animals, especially fish, as it means the wholesale destruction of their environment. But the current exhibition, which has been here for a little over two years, is truly exceptional. It's an aquascaped tank designed by Takashi Amano, who died only a few months after it was built so it must be one of his last creations. I'd first been exposed to this type of aquarium at Sumida in Tokyo (which I unfortunately never got around to writing up but ranks in the top five I've ever been to), but this tank in Lisbon is on another level. It must be 20m long, and in a video playing in the room Amano says he expects the finished product to be the most beautiful he had ever created. I hope he got a chance to see it before he died.

The fish in these tanks are just common pet shop freshwater species (mostly tetras, at Lisbon) but the species isn't the point, it's the beauty of the overall exhibit. It's mesmerising, and it's made better by the fact that this is truly a living environment for the fish. I've often wondered if a zoo exhibit can be so large and complex that the inhabitants have no concept of their captivity. I don't know, but if ever that is achievable I think this tank is the one that does it. It's a gem, and a terrible, terrible shame that it will be dismantled in September. Amano deserves to be recognised as one of the great exhibit designers.

I'll leave it there, other than to say there's one more little bonus to tempt you to Lisbon: not a single mention of Nemo or bloody Dory anywhere.

 

Spoiler alert: I am in Madrid. I am currently tossing up whether to visit the quite outrageously priced (in more ways than one) Faunia. What do they have there that I won't be able to see in any other major European zoos? Will regret eat away at me if I don't go? And how much of Faunia is indoors?

 

Quite a lot is indoors; I'd definitely recommend taking a look if you're in Madrid.

 

Yellow-legged Gull is a common wild species in Spain and Portugal; I'd be surprised if none were to be seen in Lisbon.

 

Not only that but you would stand a very good chance of seeing the penguins and the sea-lion because such animals are rarely, if ever offshow and are easy to spot.

 

You are a true gentleman, thanks. There's a couple of species there that I will therefore miss out on, but I think I can live with it. I'm pretty sure I've seen both of those penguin species at Nagoya and I've seen Hoffmann's sloths in multiple places. Nancy MA's night monkey is a bit of a loss, but I'll deal.

I should have gone there on Tuesday rather than Madrid (post pending), but you live and learn. I was planning to visit but the price is very steep, at €27, and the pricing system penalises you for waiting until the last couple of days to buy a ticket - were I still in Madrid in 10 days or so I could get in for €16. I understand that pricing structure for airline and train tickets where there's actually a finite number of tickets and a need to fill them. But it's actually quite infuriating in a zoo. I haven't definitely ruled it out - will decide in the morning - but leaning against.

 

http://www.zootierliste.de/en/zoosmap.php?showzoo=10002198
http://www.zootierliste.de/en/zoosmap.php?showzoo=10001419

 

How much are you expecting to pay for transport in total? If you're saving around $8000 then the cost of the Eurail pass must be a lot more than I thought.

 

Better late than never.

Zoo #6 - Madrid Zoo and Aquarium, Spain, 21/03/2017

I arrived in Madrid via the overnight train from Lisbon, and promptly got lost on the way to the hostel to drop off my backpack and insulin. An excellent start. By the time I'd had a shower, and called home it was past midday. This was pretty frustrating as this was the only one of my four days in Madrid that was forecast to be above 13 degrees.

I chose, then, to head to the zoo, as it was closer than Faunia and had slightly later opening hours. This was a considerable mistake, because Madrid is a bad zoo. Despite being quite a large site I stayed here less than three hours, and the brevity of this post reflects that.

There is nothing truly outstanding here: I knew enough not to expect that but I least thought there would be some decent bits and pieces to make the trip worthwhile. The highlight turned out to be a species I didn't expect to see, but with which I am very familiar: a group of five yellow-footed rock-wallabies. Though they had a pleasant exhibit that was a good size the reason they stood out was because they were the most frenetically energetic wallabies I've ever seen, racing all over the enclosure one after the other. Spring may be in the air, despite the fact that it SNOWED on Thursday. Snow was not part of this plan, just as an aside.

The most recent significant investment - at least in animal facilities - looks to be the aquarium, which was built in the mid 1990s. It's ok, but certainly shows its age, and there's nothing of particular interest. Bird exhibits were minimal. Madrid's reptile house didn't disappoint, like Al-Ain and Lisbon, by virtue of being closed.

Apart from that, the gorilla exhibit is good for its time (a sign indicates it opened in 1976), and the flamingo pool was pleasant. I found the latter a touch surprising because there were no barriers - just a sign directing people not to trespass. Many of the barriers around the zoo felt unobtrusive to the point of irrelevance, in fact: this is good for viewing but doesn't inspire confidence that visitors and animals alike will stay where each belongs.

The rest of the zoo oscillated between sufficient and outright rubbish. Two sun bears shared a tiny concrete pen: when I went past a woman was throwing peanuts to one of the bears, which was begging in such a way that made me think it had played this game before. I half-spoke, half-yelled at her to stop, but she just looked at me for a moment as if I were from Mars and then continued throwing peanuts until she became bored. This was the second time I'd observed feeding by visitors in Iberia: at Lisbon a group were passing dead leaves to a giraffe, but I ignored it on account that the giraffes had already denuded the trees as far as they could reach.

This is my third straight zoo with a white tiger, and Madrid also has a golden tabby (is that what they're called?) - a beautiful cat but one that shouldn't be in the zoo. Like at Lisbon, signage glossed over the fact that white tigers are not an endangered species but a cultivated mutation, only saying there were none left in the wild. On the subject of cats, I was more successful in spotting Iberian lynx here than at Lisbon, which was another rare highlight.

I am aware that baboons can be kept at far greater density than nearly all other large mammals, but the concrete mountain they inhabited here was swarming with baboons like vultures on an abandoned kill. I was there to witness an outbreak of conflict. Much screaming to be heard.

There's not much more to say. The weather turned against me savagely for the next two days, consigning me to indoor activities. It even snowed on me on Thursday. Melburnians are a hardy bunch, accustomed to dealing with temperatures from 12 to 42 degrees with relative equanimity. But snow is quite another thing altogether.

By Friday, my last day in Madrid, what I really wanted to do was have a look around the city itself, and so I took a pass on Faunia. I was also a bit resentful of a ticketing system in which I could have saved a whopping €11 by buying tickets 10 days in advance, which made the already steep €27 feel positively outrageous. Still, I wish I'd gone there instead of Madrid Zoo, with its more interesting collection and hopefully better quality exhibits. Next time.

 

No, that would be a different calculation though the savings are still significant, not least because I would need two of the 90 day global passes for it to be of any use whatsoever.

I'm comparing the cost of early accommodation and transport bookings to if I were doing what Chlidonias is able to do in Asia and simply deciding where to go and where to stay a couple of days in advance.

 

@CGSwans got it. It is still a remarkable saving. Has that been used to extend the trip or are you just banking it for the future?

Picking up on an earlier theme, dealing with regret, or fear of missing out (FOMO) when travelling is an interesting one. I usually tell myself I'll be back one day. I think the truth is that not only can you obviously not see everything, but I think most people can't see everything they could see. Downtime is really important, and neglecting it leads to travel burn-out. For most of us anyway!

 

A bit of both. Certainly careful budgeting has allowed the trip to reach the ridiculous scale of ambition that it has. But I'm also too cautious to risk going home without a nest egg to start up again with, even if it's a small one.

Absolutely. So far I'm really only spending about 4-5 hours a day 'doing things' and maybe the same amount just out and about. You've got to be sensible about it, and especially when you have untrustworthy knees. It'd be different if I were away for a week, but I'm not. Wearing myself out and getting hurt would be quite stupid.

I have a 200 day trip. If I do one enjoyable thing a day I will go home with 200 happy memories. That should be enough for anybody.

 

I visited Madrid Zoo in the early 1990s and vowed not to return unless there was significant change. With the opening of Faunia I was coinciding a return trip, but from your review I see nothing has changed so that's that idea shelved, maybe in another 25 years?

 

Zoo #7 - Oceanografic, Spain, 28/03/2017

I don't much like doubling up zoo visits on the same day, as you are inevitably over-conscious of whether you are leaving enough time for everything. This can have a particularly detrimental effect on whichever collection goes first. It was Oceanografic that drew that short straw for my one and only day available in Valencia. And I do indeed wish I had spent more time there, as I could have done. Because this is an excellent zoo.

I used that word, rather than 'aquarium', deliberately because if there is anywhere that exposes the utter artificiality of the distinction it is this place. Yes, the exhibits are nearly all aquatic (the exception being Aldabra tortoises, although one was being deliberately confounding by sitting squarely in the middle of its pond of drinking water). But it is not a traditional aquarium in so far as fish and marine invert exhibits are not the predominant focus. Nor is it simply an upsized edition of the traditional aquarium to include marine mammals, like say Georgia Aquarium.

The difference here is in the design. It was created as part of a landmark architectural project, the City of Arts and Sciences, and that design cred really shows. I haven't been to an aquarium that wasn't wholly or at least mostly comprised of a series of rooms in a single building, and it's a standard model that inevitably imposes limits on space, with knock-on effects for what sorts of design are possible.

Oceanografic overcomes this by building a series of separate exhibits in an otherwise open, outdoor space: in other words, it isn't a large 'aquarium': it is a small zoo. And a stunningly successful one. It further aids the perception of openness by building its purely marine exhibits - the sharks, reef etc - entirely underground, so that it's not simply a campus of disconnected buildings, which would have run counter to the open aesthetic. Most of the buildings you do see from outside don't even have any exhibits in them, but are mostly restaurants. The most important overall consequence is that unlike every other busy aquarium I've been to (and it was busy), it wasn't crowded, and it wasn't noisy. This is a vast, vast improvement.

Having said all that, a lot of the open space feels a little like a missed opportunity. Most of it is a large, (I think interconnected) series of lakes for ducks and pelicans. It looks like a great, biologically active space for them - it's thoroughly over-run with aquatic plants - but I wonder if some of that area couldn't have been used to provide larger exhibits for the Humboldt's penguins and perhaps the sea lions, but particularly the penguins.

That aside, the overall standard here is excellent. I was particularly taken with, of all things, the big shark tank. It's an exhibit that I've become progressively less interested in as I go to more aquaria, but here it is a wonderful 7million litre space shaped like a ---, with circular spaces at each end and a long, long tunnel (almost a full semi-circle of acrylic). What I liked best here was the black painted wall and use of lighting to create the illusion of depth of field, with sharks swimming in and out of the darkness. I have little doubt that the far wall of the tank is only about a metre from the point where I can no longer see through the water, but the effect is still great.

The other two 'fish' exhibits are the Mediterranean and tropical/temperate halls. The Mediterranean is a welcome focus on local species and on a biome that is rarely represented in more cookie cutter-style aquaria. Most of the smaller habitat or species-specific tanks in the temperate-tropical hall were closed for renovation, but I enjoyed the kelp forest tank (not real kelp, I don't think but could be wrong) and the main reef tank was well-executed. The kelp tank looked over-stocked though.

Back outside, there's a fine looking geodesic dome aviary for wetlands birds (scarlet ibis, roseate spoonbills and a couple of others) which is walk-through with a guide, but the line was quite long and I felt I got a good enough view from the outside. A butterfly house on the opposite side of the zoo didn't appear to have any butterflies in it, but I'm not an invert person and I didn't look very hard.

If the dolphins have access to their show pool outside show times then they too have a good space available, though if they are confined to the pens behind it then they certainly don't. The other marine mammal exhibits were the belugas and walrus. Belugas had the biggest tank I've seen them in, though I do feel the jury is out on whether they have an adequate space *anywhere*, including here. The walrus were quite active, which was good. Add sea otters and polar bears here and they have the full set of ABSeas.

My overall assessment is that Oceanografic pips Lisbon as the best so-called 'aquarium' I've been to - especially given the impending destruction of Lisbon's best exhibit - though that might be more a statement on how it improves on the aquarium format than anything else. It is simply a must visit.

 

Oh, I'm aware. It wasn't so much the price as the price relative to the size of the zoo, and *especially* the price relative to two weeks earlier. I would have coped with a couple of euro, but €11 was obnoxious.

I also understand that the same company is in charge of both Madrid zoos, and being somebody who aspires to be an conscientious consumer, I didn't feel like validating what was clearly, to me, poor values at Madrid. If you're going to privatise a public institution like the Madrid government did it's reasonable to expect some investment in improving the service, but there was not the slightest sign of such.