Since March was extremely rainy, I hoped that April would not be so. No such luck. However, there was a dinosaur exhibit in Madrid that I was keen on seeing, and I wanted to do it before Easter, because it would be packed during the holidays and I could not get there in May due to personal stuff. And since getting to the Casa de Campo area takes so long by train, I looked at combining it with something else around (it’s a four-hour roundtrip from where I am). What other thing was close? Somewhere else I never go because it’s far away by public transport and a nightmare to park around – the local zoo Zoo Aquarium de Madrid. There was after all only a 10% chance of rain…

Spoiler alert: while I was getting drenched (I’m being dramatic, of course. I had an umbrella) in the zoo, and later in the exhibit, the weather app said “partly cloudy” and there was no mention of storms nor rain. But the skies opened. Ask the peafowl…

I took the train and changed to the underground until I got to the Casa de Campo stop. There were not many people around since it was a weekday. There’s a bus that takes you to the zoo, but I found it more efficient to walk, since there is a pedestrian way alongside the road. I reached the zoo a bit after it opened at 11:00, and just as my ticket was getting scanned the first few raindrops fell. At first, it seemed like a small drizzle, but soon it started to rain in earnest. By that time, I had managed to get to the pandas, about 40 metres into the zoo.

I’d been to the Zoo Aquarium de Madrid twice in my life before. The first one I was very small. I have no memory of it, but there is a home video of three-year-old me chasing a peacock and a voice warning “come back, it’s going to bite you!”. The second time I was in third grade, and had my first camera. I remember that I was devastated because the pandas were very far away and I could only take a picture of a distant, tiny, black-and-white blur. That was decades ago, and I had never been back, though I had a recurring dream for years that involved one of the pools there.

The zoo opened in 1972 as an alternative to the “Beast House” or Casa de Fieras that used to be hosted in the Retiro Park, a few sad and crammed-looking cages that must have been horrible for the animals. As every animal park, Zoo Aquarium de Madrid is not free of controversy, especially related to the ethics of keeping great apes and cetaceans in captivity. They used to have dolphins, but those were surrendered and sent away earlier in 2025. Conversely, the zoo participates in over 60 conservation and breeding programs for endangered animals – they have breeding couples of owls, whose chicks are routinely released into the wild, and have succeeded in breeding pandas (they claim to be the most successful institution at breeding panda outside China) and white rhinos. They have non-breeding animals as ambassadors, such as a family of Iberian lynx.

The zoo is vaguely organised per continent – Europe, Australia, Asia, Africa and the Americas, and the home of actual wild animals such as storks and rabbits.

As I went into the zoo, the first thing I spotted was a small lake with flamingoes, pelicans and (squatting) storks. The storks are free to come and go, but they like to be in the zoo because they get free food, I guess. My idea had been to walk a spiral and try to see everything, but I got distracted by “Panda Land”, signalled by a big red gate – after all, they are the main attraction. I thought the pandas might be visible, and they were – much closer than I remembered indeed. I did get to see both the male and the female, who live apart within the same installation. I had time to take a few pictures before it started to rain in earnest. And no, they were not distant, tiny black-and-white blobs this time, and not only because I had borrowed a really good lens for the day. I had to put the camera away when the rain became too heavy.

It rained for a couple of hours, and that impacted me a little. I ended up sharing shelter with a band of peafowl, and had to go from covered exhibit to covered exhibit at first. I found the orang-utan territory very sad, and I did not catch a glimpse of any gorilla. In the aquarium, I got stuck with all the school visits, but there were quite a few sharks and big fish in the ocean tank.

I ambled around the Australian area, where most of the animals were unfazed – especially the cassowary, which by the way is apparently the most dangerous bird in existence, even if I’m way more crept out (and fascinated) by emus. I did not see the koalas, and I walked past a tree which seemed fenced off just because. As rain cleared out, some of the animals started playing around, such as the binturong (Arctictis binturong), a distant relative of civets. At around 13:20, I had reached Africa, and I was in front of the hippos when it stopped raining. Awesome!

Since I had borrowed a camera lens which is better – but heavier – than mine, I really wanted to try it out. Carrying it around without being able to use the camera due to the rain, at all, would have been a bummer. After the rain stopped, I was able to take quite a few good pictures though. Those included the Siberian tiger (Panthera tigris tigris), and its relative the domestic cat (Felis catus), whom I’m not sure is a resident or a squatter in the “farm” section of the zoo alongside the sheep, goats, and a very large pig.

Since I’d been to Emociones al Vuelo a few days earlier, I did not mind the lack of Raptor Flight exhibit due to rain. I did miss the Exotic Birds one, but I caught the Sea Lion exercise (hello, swimming pool from years of recurring dreams). Around 14:30, it had stopped raining, the animals had eaten, and I caught many of them. Unfortunately, most – especially the carnivores – were napping. I did however saw a very active red panda (Ailurus fulgens) around the tree that I previously thought was fenced off for no reason.

By the time I left, the workers had also dropped off a few Easter Eggs throughout the zoo as the holidays were about to start. At 17:00 I had to be at Escenario Puerta de Ángel to see Saurios, a dinosaur exhibit, which turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. Most of the animatronics I had already seen as “Dino Expo XXL” – I recognised it because of the broken neck on one of the brachiosaurus. The exhibit had a first part with a few skeleton replicas – the coolest thing, as I had never managed to see a complete cast of a Spinosaurus before. Then there was an open area with some life-sized replicas and photo-ops, but it was completely made for kids. There were actors and activities for them, which I guess were extremely fun if you’re younger than five. Yet another “dinosaurs are for kids” activity.

And then it started storming again. A black cloud, a clap of thunder, and the skies opened. Thus, we all had to hurry to the last section, which was most of what I’d seen in “Dino Expo XXL”. I was really not impressed by the whole thing – remember folks, “for all the family” means “designed for kids”. I guess I would be more gracious had the weather been nice, but… having seen most of the exhibit before for half the price, I was not impressed. Fortunately or unfortunately, there is a Jurassic World Exhibition coming up soon…