Ciudad Madero's Bicentennial Park

The Ciudad Madero Bicentennial Park was really quite an amazing idea and was a work in progress.  It has close to 30 acres of space and had nicely paved walkways, jogging paths, walking paths around the park.  They had a nice water area for the kids as well

We walked to an area that was for exercising and there were many different machines for the youth and for the seniors in a shaded area.  We used some of the machines and had fun trying them out.  Their signs are in English and Spanish.  The instructions on the machines were in English.

There was a large lake in the park with lots of ducks and we saw turtles sunning themselves.

We walked to the aviary and figured out how to open the gates to get inside.  A man was cleaning the small pond inside and basically told us we had to get permission to enter from the guy at the gate.  I walked around and there was one bird of prey and one colorful toucan and a few fancy chickens and ducks so it was a good thought but it seemed lacking

They had grills under artificial shade that people could use that have never been used and were rusty.  Their grassy areas were green and the grass needed cut.  The first bathroom was locked and we kept walking around the lake and another bathroom had doors open.  They had paddleboats but not in the water.  We seem to do things in the heat of the day and the people we saw were all in the shade eating.  That set didn’t have answers to our questions but were interested that we were from the United States.  We finally talked to two guys about the paddle boats who said they are checking the water to see if it is safe or polluted before they let the boats get back on the water.

There was a huge flag pole and we were told it is the third largest in Mexico.  We were told that since it is a flag pole, it is automatically owned and cared for by the military.

They had an ecology center with people working inside. On our walk, around the path, we noticed they were in the midst of constructing another building they called an earth science center.

 We walked around the park and came back to the front reception building to ask what bus to catch from here and a friendly guy said he could answer all of our questions.

 He took us to the bench in the shade and told us about the park and gave us some Mexican history and told us where to visit when we have time.  He visited with us for about 30 minutes and showed us the binder indicating the days they raise the flag on their gigantic flag pole.  He said they have two different flags they can fly.  The first flag is about 34 meters long and too heavy for three people to get up so that flag is saved for very special occasions.  The smaller flag is 14 meters long can be handled more easily and is used quite often.

He then gave us a ride down the street a ways to a spot where we could catch the right bus. He was a nice guy.  We caught a standing room only bus until the school kids got off at their schools and then we sat until we came to Calle 2 where we got off the bus and checked on the collapsed sewer repair project on our walk home.