Labenne Zoo

The Zoo of Labenne is neither big nor small — it’s just the perfect size. It’s a great place for a pleasant and fun morning with your children. To tell the truth, it’s not actually located in the Basque Country, but it’s close enough — just a few kilometers from Bayonne. So if you’re staying in the French Basque Country with children, you may want to consider going there.

The zoo doesn’t have the typical “extraordinary” animals such as lions, elephants, giraffes, or tigers; but it does have many really cute animals that you can feed and touch. So if you’re looking for big, exotic animals, this isn’t the place — but if you want to entertain your children (or yourself), it’s a wonderful zoo.

The zoo is completely flat and located in a stunning mixed forest of pines and cork oaks, with plenty of shade everywhere. Since it’s a fairly small zoo, you can easily walk through it twice — so if you missed any animals the first time, you can see them on the second round. Most animal enclosures are spacious, beautiful, and clean, and the animals look happy and well cared for.

The ring-tailed lemurs are especially adorable. You can touch and feed them popcorn sold at the entrance, or even give them acorns you find on the ground. Other animals you can interact with include alpacas, fallow deer, wallabies, maras, and pygmy goats. There are also some larger animals such as wolves, European lynx, several species of cranes, and other large birds.