Quotes of the Day

Xara, a female gorilla, reclines lazily in the tall grass, only centimeters away. Crouch down a bit and you can gaze directly into her astonishingly soulful eyes. Later, a dozen curious ring-tailed lemurs surround you; they're so close that some even reach out their small, dexterous hands to touch the sleeve of your T shirt. This is not some remote African campsite but the town of Fuengirola, on Spain's densely developed, tourist-packed Costa del Sol. Once you've achieved the perfect sunburn and eaten your body weight in ice cream, head for Fuengirola Zoo, where amazing encounters like these await you. The zoo is tucked among holiday high-rise apartments in the center of town; keep an eye out for the entrance—wide wooden stairs fronted by five flags. Proximity to the animals and scarcity of crowds in such a quiet, lush setting is what makes this zoo so special. Here, there are no food wrappers littering the ground or pennies in the Nile crocodile pond or throngs of people pushing and shoving to see orangutans. Once an old-fashioned collection of rickety cages, the zoo was modernized in 2001 to feature "tropical-forest" dwellings. These allow visitors to see the animals at all times, yet still provide spaces to which the 1,167 furred, feathered and scaled residents can retreat. In the underwater "riverine forest," part of the Southeast Asian collection, you come face to face with a lazily floating false gavial, a narrow-snouted crocodile-like reptile. A "second-growth forest" houses flying foxes; these huge bats, which can have wingspans of up to 1.8 m, hang directly above your head. The lemur habitat, in the Madagascar section, is accessed through the gnarled trunk of a replica baobab tree. And in the Equatorial Africa area, you can watch chimps and gorillas monkey around at close range. Fuengirola Zoo specializes in captive breeding for endangered species, chimpanzee-group research and tropical-forest education. And in summer, it opens its doors until midnight so that guests can observe its many nocturnal creatures in action. A pleasant diversion in a resort where nocturnal creatures are often wilder—and far less appealing. tel: (34-952) 666 301; www.zoofuengirola.com

• Michelle Patient
• Where the Wild Things Are