Cacti, cats and canoodling

The neighborhood, or barrio, that I'm living in is named Palermo.  In addition to its considerable size, Palermo is also well known for its green areas— indeed, there's even a grouping of parks known as the Bosques de Palermo (Palermo Woods).  Although I've walked, run and occasionally gotten lost around many of these parks, I've only scratched the surface in exploring them.  This blurb will probably be the first in a long series of Palermo Park posts.

The Carlos Thays Botanical Garden can be described in three words: cacti, cats and canoodling.  Several greenhouses around the park house exotic plants, but the colony of cacti I encountered was truly unexpected.  In a city where the humidity is above 80 percent most days, it seems either crazy or cruel to grow these desert-loving prickly plants.

Earnest Hemingway would have been friends with Carlos Thays, a landscape architect from the 19th century.  Both men had a deep affinity for felines whose descendants still prowl their properties.  And while some of the resident cats at Hemingway's home in Key West boast six-digit paws, the kitties in the botanical garden have street cred: they have managed to stay alive and clean in a city that is obsessed with dogs and has no qualms about hitting human pedestrians let alone feline ones.

Of course, I am in Latin America so a high level of PDA is nothing surprising, but at least half of the visitors at this park were canoodling couples.  Maybe it's the peaceful atmosphere or maybe it's the nude statues of Greek gods throughout the garden.  Whatever the reason, Carlos Thays Botanical Garden is a popular date spot.

I just hope they don't roll onto a cactus...