Just like I kept trying to book a visit to the hall at Pacífico, I had been after a Burrolandia timeslot for a while. Burrolandia reservations are free, and the “tickets” are released around 9:00 on Monday mornings. I did not want to go in the middle of the winter as it is an open place, but when the weather became nicer, I was never around to book a spot before they ran out. Nevertheless, the Madrid area gets rather empty in August, so I could finally secure a visit. Once that was taken care of, I found myself facing another issue – after the pandemic, I developed a literal hay-fever, and straw makes me feel rather miserable. I’ve got tablets for that, but I should not drive after taking one.
Thus, I roped my sibling into driving for the day, because they are a fan of everything equine.
The non-profit Burrolandia – “Donkeyland” – is an animal protection organisation. It was founded in 1996 as a sanctuary / rescue for retired donkeys, mules (offspring of a donkey stallion and a horse mare) and hinnies (offspring of a horse stallion and a donkey mare, or jenny). Donkeys (Equus asinus) were domesticated from the African wild ass some 6, 000 years ago. There are millions of donkeys in the world, most of them kept as working animals in developing countries – however, as machinery substituted them, the number of donkeys in Europe plummeted. Burrolandia is involved in maintaining the species and the different Spanish sub-breeds.
The rescue is located at the end of a pretty run-down road in Tres Cantos, a municipality so close to Madrid that it could be a neighbourhood. The venue itself is mostly an open area where the resident animals get to interact with visitors, many of them freely. Besides the donkeys, mules and hinnies that the association has taken in, there are horses, a pony, goats, sheep, pot-bellied pigs, hens, geese, ducks, peafowl, helmeted guinea fowl, a deer doe, an ankole-watusi cow, a few dogs and a cat. Burrolandia is open to the public on Sundays, usually in two two-hour turns, one at 10:00 and the other at 12:30. Visitors can buy a bag of goodies to feed the animals for a nominal price to support the non-profit, get merchandise, or directly donate.
There are fewer visitors in August and it was easier to get tickets and for the day, there was only one long timeslot from 10:00 to 14:00. We arrived a few minutes after opening time, and I was surprised at how high “low demand” actually was. There were maybe twenty to thirty cars already there, with a ton of families with toddlers and kids going nuts about… the dogs, in most cases. Most kids were terrified of donkeys, though they were smaller than I had imagined. I would have expected them to be closer to a horse size, so I think that most of what I grew up considering “donkeys” were mules. Live and learn…
Burrolandia bans bringing food for the animals – both to control what the animals are fed, and as fundraising tool. We bought a bag of veggies, which contained mostly carrot, celery, some lettuce and a piece of dry bread. The donkeys, goats and sheep were all ambling outside, but most the mules, hinnies and horses were in “donkey jail” behind the fences. You could still feed them though, but they are bigger and possibly less docile than the smaller donkeys which roamed free. They were all very acquainted with the brown paper bags with the treats though, which made them very friendly. In general, I was reminded more of the Okunoshima bunnies than the Nara deer, even if one of the mules did get a bite out of my finger, and the baby goats kept trying to climb onto us. My sibling had the great idea to use some of their riding gloves to pet and feed the animals.
We stayed for about an hour and a half, and then moved on to Las Rozas de Madrid, another village in the area known for nothing except for the high-end “open shopping mall”, a street full of outlet brand-fashion boutiques selling discounted items. I had heard on and on how fantastic Las Rozas Village was. There are specific bus tours from Madrid that take tourists to the mall and back.
We parked the car in another shopping centre, Heron City Las Rozas, where we changed clothes and shoes because… we did not trust ourselves with the barn smell. We walked into the Village, and I don’t know what I was expecting, but for sure something with a big more… grandiose I guess. To my surprise, the shops were almost empty (both of produce, and customers) and every second shop was a Scalpers… I have to say I was quite underwhelmed. We did not even find a nice place to grab a bite to eat. Furthermore, I heard at least three other people commenting the same thing – they had heard a lot about the mall and it was disappointed.
We ended up having lunch back in Heron City Las Rozas. We found a Japanese chain restaurant named Sumo, a sort of buffet with a flat rate for a number of dishes. Since it was still quite early – and again, August – the place was mostly empty – we had sushi, takoyaki, wakame salad, and some gyoza. As dessert was not included, afterwards we went to Starbucks to have a matcha drink, named after a House of Dragon character for some publicity stunt – Dracarys Matcha Frappuccino. It was a cold matcha latte with white chocolate cream on top, to which I added some vanilla, just because I could, and it was a great idea. I think the matcha with strawberry cream on top was a better combination, but apparently that one was only available in spring. I guess I’ll have to try the standard Matcha Frappuccino at some point.
We went on to our last stop for the day. Xanadú is a shopping mall in Arroyomolinos, home to Atlantis Aquarium Madrid, a smallish oceanarium. Upon entering, you go down some stairs, and the first area are Rivers and Mangroves, with some mudskippers, and cute shiny fish. Actually, the first tank the visitor encounters hosts a shoal of red-bellied piranhas (Pygocentrus nattereri). Of course, there are a few axolotls (Ambystoma mexicanum) too.
Then come the Mediterranean anemones, jellyfish, starfish… Afterwards are the Tropical Reefs with the usual suspects – who does not try to find Nemo among the clownfish? There are also butterflyfish, surgeonfish, and of course all the corals. The Open Sea area, a typical central tank, has few species of sharks – blacktip sharks, grey reef sharks, bonnetheads, longtail carpet sharks… There are also rays and loggerhead sea turtles. In between the different views of the central tank are the penguins, which were pretty photogenic! The last area had a few small tanks with Coastal Ecosystems – anemones, sea cucumbers and hermit crabs mostly. Staff had put out some glass shells for the latter to move into, which was fun.
The gift shop had a lot of cute souvenirs, and afterwards we walked around the rest of the mall for a while, had a smoothie, and eventually drove off. It was a good day, with lots of cute animals, some of which I even got to pat. Not the sharks, sadly, but I made a lot of donkey friends, even if they only liked me for my vegetables and stale bread.
JBinnacle – A Travel Logbook 