We got our new (second hand) car last week so there was only one thing to do on the weekend: Road Trip!
We drove about 2 hours to Papiliorama – a slice of Belize Rainforest located just south of Switzerland’s capital city, Bern. It was great. The outside temp was about 1 degree Celsius but inside the geodomes it was a toasty 20-27. So actually quite a worthwhile winter jaunt!
There were several different sections. First we went into the Jungle Trek bit – it’s a recreation of a 10,000 hectare piece of rainforest the Papiliorama Foundation sponsors in South America and contains exotic birds, lizards (chamelions etc), coatis and peccary pigs. The toucans were particularly impressive. I don’t think I’ve seen one in real life before and I kind of expected them to be bigger. But they’re a good size, similar to a Kookaburra and with that fantastic beak. I mostly hate birds but Kookaburras and Toucans are awesome.
Next we did a circuit of the outside bit – maybe not as successful in winter. Particularly the Swiss Highland bug dome, where everything was dead or hibernating. The farm section was good though – cute baby dwarf goats and the large hairy pigs were excellent grunters: SQUEEEEHHH!
Next we visited the butterfly dome, which was really enchanting. So many colourful and beautifully patterned butterflies flitting about. P wasn’t wildly impressed by this, he is a man after my own heart – seen it, move on! But it was warm and somehow quite peaceful to be there among the floating insects and stinky fruit they feed on. Speaking of stinky, the final bit we visited was the Nocturnarama dome – and I’m glad we did. It was almost pitch black and had an excellent musky stink from the nocturnal beasts housed within – mostly monkey / rodent type things – like tree racooons. Tiny bats were flitting all about and in the centre they had a big pool with freshwater stingrays (P LOVES stingrays) and big Amazonian fish. There were also Ocelots but we couldn’t spot them, and Caimans, which looked completely freaky in the UV lights – like glowing dinosaurs.
The whole place was sweetly un-crowded in the way of many Swiss attractions (not sure if this was due to the season/Christmas being so close or just the usual Swiss thing of less people, less craziness: I am still getting used to good things being “easy” and not rammed after London!) and also sweetly dinky with a crappy, expensive cafe that was exactly what we wanted after our drive. Definitely worth the trip and looking forward to exploring more Swiss family attractions in 2015!
PS: Thanks to everyone who contacted me after my last Sux Baby post. I really appreciate all the support and I am feeling a bit better. x
clairevetica 