A walk through the Botanical Garden of Caracas

Hello, Hivers and Wednesday walkers!

Another Wednesday, and time to share a walk. I did this one last week. Maybe some of you have read my post about the first part of my visit to the Ciudad Universitaria de Caracas. I will tell you about the rest of my visit to the University in the next days, but today I will share how we finished our tour that day.

When we planned the visit, we asked the guide if we could finish it by visiting the Botanical Garden of Caracas, which is technically part of the University and adjacent to the Ciudad Universitaria.

Many of us who live in Caracas have passed by it so many times and have never been inside. I was one of them until last Thursday.

The garden is currently closed to the general public for the holiday at the University, but since we were with the Copred guide, she arranged to let us in. We were allowed an hour inside the garden and that was better than nothing, so we took advantage of it.

The afternoon was beautiful, and the garden paths were inviting.

There were a few workers doing maintenance in some of the areas. And the place looked much more well-kept than I expected, to be honest.

But the buildings of the greenhouses that we passed by did look a bit neglected.

Shortly after starting to walk, we found a detour to the building where the administrative headquarters of the garden is located. And that's where we headed first.

This building houses the Botanical Institute and the National Herbarium. It has a library and an auditorium.

In front of the building, there is a huge tree with a bust of Tobias Lasser next to it. He was the founder of the botanical garden and the faculty of sciences at the Central University of Venezuela (UCV).

We went inside the building to look around. But all the places were closed. However, we saw this mural on one of the walls. Here too, art is integrated into the spaces as in the rest of the Ciudad Universitaria. The author of the mural is the artist Wilfredo Lam.

On the way out, we turned back to the main road and then walked through the Arboretum towards the Venezuela Lagoon. We didn't make it to the lagoon though, as we only had an hour, and we didn't have enough time.

But we did enjoy the walk through the trees.

We saw some magnificent trees, and one thing I missed was information about the species of trees we were seeing.

Some were huge and imposing.

Some of the side paths to the main path looked beautiful. Hopefully one day I will be able to visit again with more time to walk through the garden.

And do you remember at the beginning I said that I have passed by the garden thousands of times but without entering? And the fact is that this garden is adjacent to the main highway of the city.

What a contrast! A haven of nature and peace right next to the urban chaos.

It was getting late and we had to go back. On the way back we noticed that part of the road still had the original stone floors from the time when it was all part of a colonial hacienda. Hacienda Ibarra, on whose land the Ciudad Universitaria was built.

We did not reach the Laguna Venezuela, but we did pass by a small pond.

These trees seemed curious to me. I saw some inside the University too. They are known as Coco de Mono. Their fruits look like taparas, but they are not and they break easily.

We arrived at the entrance area again, but I didn't want to leave without taking a picture of this magnificent tree.

It was my first time at the Botanical Garden of Caracas, and I hope to go visit again soon.

This is my post for this week's #wednesdaywalk challenge hosted by @tattoodjay in collaboration with #makemesmile hosted by @elizacheng.

Thank you for reading.

_{All images and writing are my own unless otherwise stated.}

© CoquiCoin

August 23, 2023

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