AT A GLANCE

Why go?

Chorros de Milla Zoo is Mérida's beloved mountain park, where a collection of Andean and Venezuelan wildlife lives among cloud-forest trees, ferns and a ribbon of waterfalls fed by the Río Milla. Set on a slope at roughly 1,850 m on the city's northeastern edge, it pairs animal viewing with a scenic walk up the creek, and it doubles as a rescue and rehabilitation centre for the region's fauna.↗↗↗

Opened in the early 1950s and spanning about 10 hectares, the zoo has been a fixture of local life for more than seventy years; Mérida residents treat it as part of their civic identity. Today you can meet the Andean flagship species—the spectacled bear and the Andean condor—alongside jaguar, puma, tapir and playful capuchin monkeys, then follow the rushing water up to the cascades that gave the park its name.↗↗↗