It really is a long time and shows how back my interests and fascination with  dinosaurs go! Just found these pictures on my first visit to a dino-park ever… Bellomonte, Playa de Guanabo (in the outskirts of Havana, Cuba. These days disappeared and the area is known as a fashionable beach resort as far as I know).

I find extremely funny the advertising postcard with cut-outs of Zallinger’s Yale Mural,   (“… because you dream of prehistoric animals, I send you this…”  says my father’s dedication on the back).  Little did a four year old know that many years later he would be doing a remake of a Zallinger book with Dr. Robert Bakker “The Big Golden Book of Dinosaurs”

We first knew about this park thorough the advertisements that talked about “real” dinosaurs in “cartón piedra” (something that translates as “stone cardboard”… probably it was some sort of cement mixture)…

When we arrived to the site for the first time,  it was a bit of a disappointment as the models were really… terrible!!  Stegosaurus, Tyrannosaurus and Brontosaurus…   Life-Size  but…Even a four year old knew the difference and could be disappointed by what he is promised and  expects… and for what he finally gets, no matter how much he craves for it!

Unfortunately this was  the only picture I could find : Family members under the Brontosaurus… the T. rex was much worst and had three fingers like in the Fantasia movie 

Never mind, I have no idea how many times I made my parents and relatives take me to the park! It was “awesome” .

In the picture there is my grandmother and…  I’m the little guy beside the family  priest (Father Oriol) that I, funnily enough, remember fondly… mostly because the man had a hand for hobbies, DIY,  bric-a-brac  and once made me a fantastic moving dragon the breathed fire with wires and some sort of paste… at least that is what I remember. In contrast with the rest of the family, he never wanted to leave and stayed  in Cuba after  the Revolution until his death, working with the people.

So there… with me also playing with my first Marx model dinosaurs,  a couple of affectionate words about an episode of my distant past and my early love affair with the Icons of Prehistory. We all start with fascinating, vaguely scientific Icons (apply this to Jurassic Park) and some of us finish off with a craving for more of the science and less of the Icons…

For me this was a far cry from Extreme Dinosaurs Pt 2…!… by the way, if you still haven’t got it… what are you waiting for?