The Jamaica Zoo – Lacovia, St Elizabeth

I’ve been waiting for WEEKS to do this blog post! What I love the most about what I do is just hitting the road with no agenda and finding whatever pops up on any given day in Jamaica to experience and share with you guys!  So here’s another road trip made possible by Budget Rental Car Jamaica.

The Jamaica zoo in Burton mountain, Lacovia, St Elizabeth was a gem of a discovery and I found it by accident (as usual) because my friend from back home who was traveling with me wanted to see Bamboo Avenue. She’d never driven through it so we set out to DO ROAD with no real plans. Once we passed through Bamboo Avenue we continued on towards Santa Cruz because we needed to hit Scotiabank and it was then that we saw a sign on the side of the road that said Jamaica Zoo. So we decided that we would absolutely turn back after Santa Cruz and hit the zoo!

If I remember correctly it was Monday morning and driving into the zoo it looked absolutely deserted, in fact we didn’t even know if it was open because we were literally the ONLY car in the parking lot. But we decided to enter and see if it was open anyway and indeed it was.  So we paid the admission fee and had the most personal, private tour anyone can get being the only two people on the premises.

I had no idea what to expect from this zoo but the first thing we saw even before entering was a cage full of rabbits.  I had to giggle a little because all I have to do to see rabbits is sit on my couch in Canada and look out my patio window.  They’re all over the place back home (like I literally just saw one run past my patio).

Once we paid our entrance fee we were guided to a little presentation area with seating and we were asked to take a seat.  I loved that even though we were the ONLY two guests they began their presentation as if they had an entire audience.  I won’t post many individual pictures because they’re all in the video compilation below which shows everything, but I can tell you that this stage presentation is all very hands-on.  They invited both of us into the presentation area to hold and interact with every single animal.  This isn’t at all like our zoo back home where everything is completely caged and there’s not much opportunity for interaction.  I was charmed by this personal touch!

NOTE:  The zoo workers will even use your own camera to take tons of pictures for you while you’re hanging out with all the animals.  Trust me I had billions of pictures that they took for me, all I had to do was sift through them in the end and choose the best ones.

After the presentation we were introduced to Shawna who would be our personal walking guide around the rest of the zoo.  It was really neat hearing her tell us about everything at the zoo….she really knew her stuff and seems to LOVE what she does.  And she was a lot of fun!

Before I go any further I’ll post the video for you to watch.  It includes pretty much everything we saw during our walking tour.  Make sure to watch it all the way through…..the video clips at the end are the BEST part!

So now that you’ve seen it I’ll tell you about those gorgeous lions!  They’re brothers and they were actually born in Santa Cruz!  Their names are Sainty and Santa…..as in St Elizabeth and Santa Cruz.  Super cute names.  I was blown away with how close we could be to these majestic animals.  At our zoo back home I’ve never really seen the lions because they’ve always been hiding in their enclosure, which is guarded by walls, fences, and more fences.  I would never be able stand less than two feet away from them!

The whole Jamaica zoo experience was pretty awesome!  Yes it’s a MUCH smaller zoo than I’m used to but it was such a charming tour.  The personal touch is really nice.  Shawna told me that everyone who visits gets a walking guide to explain everything they’re seeing.  We talked to her a lot about her love of animals and her job and I really appreciated her enthusiasm.

Seriously, if you ever have half a day to kill in St Elizabeth you should definitely go to the zoo!  They also do school tours and private tours.

For more information and admission prices please visit their website.