E-I-E-I-O: Farming in Panaca

Our family has been to quite a few working farms so we figured we knew what to expect in Panaca. Located 40 minutes from Bogotá, between Zipaquirá and Briceño, this farming theme park definitely exceeded our expectations. It had all the activities my 4 and 6-year old loved, especially since the park encourages interaction between the visitors and the animals.

Walking around in different stations

Just inside the entrance, we were initially quite unimpressed with the two horses in the corral--small compared to the huge Perjerons we had seen before. This was until we saw all the park had to offer! There were over 2,400 domestic animals in 7 theme stations, many different shows and a whole lot of fun activities.

One of the residents of Panaca

We watched a couple of shows before and after lunch. The first was the pig race, wherein hubby guessed the winning pig! The whole spiel before the races was in Spanish so we only understood a bit (and none of the jokes at all) but the singing of the emcees was good.

And they're off! The pig in the green shirt won!

By the end of the pig races, we had already worked up an appetite. There were 20 restaurants outdoors, we were told. We chose to have Churrasco (grilled beef) and Arroz con Pollo (rice with chicken) in one of the fast food stalls for lunch. The servings were huge! (We would realize later on that 2 regular orders would suffice for the four of us, and this applied to most restaurants we went to in Bogotá).

Dessert: Arequipe helado

Stunts at the horse show

After lunch, we managed to catch the end of one of the horse shows. There were amazing stunts, and we had the general feeling of watching a rodeo. We decided to skip the dog show (as we already see many different breeds during Woofstock in Toronto) and the small animals section (which we figured was pretty much the same as the other farms we’ve visited in Canada). Surely if we had more time, we would have gone to these stations, as these are always fun for the kids. Instead, we decided to let the kids go on a llama ride and bottle-feed the goats. It was a great decision as the kids had a blast! They had fed llamas in petting zoos before (with hay) but had not ridden on one. The girls took turns riding on Margarita, the llama, around the Estación Ganaderia (Cattle Station). Afterwards, they were given a chance to take the reins and lead the llama on a short walk.  I then got a couple of bottles of milk for them to feed the baby goats. Kids (children, not baby goats) can also bottle-feed the pigs or sheep in other pens. As my girls love feeding animals, this activity was exciting for them. Other activities we no longer got to try were riding the burro and milking the cow. Those would have been fun for sure.

We walked around some more to see the local animals—long-horned cattle, pigs, burros and many more. Then, the girls were off to play in the play house with ropes, tunnels and slides. This theme park was quite unlike any other we’ve visited. Surely, even Old Macdonald would enjoy!