Parque Museo La Venta — Attraction in Villahermosa

Mixed feelings about this place.

I've read that this is the largest concentration of Olmec artifacts, so it's a must see if you want to learn about Olmec history. To that end, the park did a pretty good job. There were a lot of impressive artifacts and art pieces and a good amount of context and explanation. It wasn't perfect, the initial overview room was largely Spanish only and I felt that they could have done a better job of organizing the artifacts by timeline or by where they were found in site or something. But it was certainly interesting and I enjoyed this part of the park.

On the other hand, the state of the zoo was pretty dismal. Some areas, such as the aviary, seemed to be alright, but other pens, especially those of the larger or more dangerous animals, were dismal and in need of cleaning, maintenance and upgrades. Many of the animals looked depressed or were just trying to sleep with inadequate privacy while tourists whistled and gawked at them. This part of the park was disappointing and if I didn't feel like I needed to see the Olmec artifacts I would have boycotted the place altogether.

So while I do think it's an important monument for the city and ultimately am happy I saw the artifacts, I hope the management takes animal care...

DO NOT GO IN THAT PARK !

i went there because of the famous statues but I wasn’t aware that there will be animals. It was a HORRIFYING experience… Animal’s spaces are mostly made of concrete or dry dirt, without grass and the LACK OF (CLEAN) WATER is unbelievable. Every animals seem really SAD/depressed and most of them are ALONE in their space. I mean I saw a jaguar eating grass…. I highly regret going there. I don’t know where their money goes, there are many ABANDONED infrastructure. I didn’t see anyone around animals, do they even have qualified people taking care of them ??????

For god sake please do not go in that park, seeing few statues is not worth seeing a bunch of depressed and bad...

The ticket took forever,.than from the next window some man shouted: where are you from? He had to fill out a list, then at the entrance we had an argument since the ticket lady gave us the Mexican entrance fee and the entrance lady told her we should have paid the foreigner entrance fee, so they argued if a permanent residence permit makes a foreigner eligible for the regular fee or not and we just stood there.....until we decided to enter the park. A very unwelcome feeling.

The park deteriorated a lot since we were here 4 years ago. Not worth the money. With or...