We finally went out yesterday and found the aquatic park we had heard about. It is within the ring road of the city (1 million+ pop) and surrounded by houses. It is in an old quarry, quite a ways below the surrounding neighborhoods. What I've heard is that the previous mayor had it developed and spent quite a bit of money on it. The new mayor (from a different political party) is not funding it as well. It has good bones though and a natural water supply and it is looking really nice. I put a marker on it on a Google map that my son set up, it has markers for my house in the city, the RV park where we are staying while it is being renovated, my condo over on the Caribbean coast and now, the water park. If you want to check it out,
here's the link, click on satellite at the top right to have real sat pictures over the streets. I had a hard time figuring out how to zoom in on a specific place, I think if you click on the
acuaparque icon at the left and then just keep clicking the plus sign on the map it works best. You can zoom pretty close, I was amazed. The sat picture was taken in the dry season as the canals and ponds at the left look dry. It's now the rainy season and they are full of water and that is where I took most of the pics of blooming water lilies.
There is a juvenile Heron perched at the top of this mass of lily pads.
As we were walking the perimeter path, I spotted this huge Pitaya growing down from the yard above. It had a lot of blooms on it (closed for the day) but no fruit.
There were several isolated fingers of water filled with blooming Water Hyacinths.
The water was very clear throughout the park. Lots of small to medium fish, probably anything larger feeds the numerous Herons.
At the other end of the park, they had a large lake and waterfall, bathrooms, playgrounds and a huge slide that landed in the sand.
Now I know who to go and ask about getting lilies when my pond is finished. My next assignment is to find the koi gardens that I've heard are here but no one seems to know where.