San Diego Zoo

Friday was San Diego Zoo day – I had been looking forward to this as they are supposed to be world leaders in zoo habitats and such like.  They certainly are world-renowned for their conservation work.  We made an early start and got there not long after the opening time of 9a.m.  Unfortunately so did quite a few bus-loads of school children (more on that shortly).  On entering, Grant read the board with notices about the day, which sadly said that the polar bears were off-exhibit.  We were a bit disappointed as we had really hoped to see these.

The reptile house was pretty cool – so huge and with some amazing snakes including an anaconda.  We can see why horror films get made about these!  I also think horror films should get made about American grade-school children – the enclosed nature of the reptile house did mean the acoustics were more pub-like than zoo-like but these children were so loud.  Never mind, the rest of the zoo was outside.

The panda bears were the other big draw-card for us.  Because the pandas don’t like big crowds and lots of noise, the zoo controls entry to this so there are only a few people at a time.  This was lovely as it meant we got really good views of the two adult bears.  They do have young ones there too but these were not out.  The bears themselves are a bit smaller than the name ‘Giant Panda’ suggests, and their white fur is not really as white as photographs suggest, but they are very gorgeous.

The zoo itself is like a giant version of Wellington Zoo – built on the side of a hill, so the trails meander up and down and around.  We found the map itself very hard to follow, but did find all the exhibits we wanted to.  The gorillas were lovely, but I prefer the habitat at the Safari Park.  The tigers were awesome – they have Sumatran tigers and we arrived at the exhibit in time for the keeper talk.  It was great to see them up close.

Of course, many of the wild animals in a zoo are nocturnal by nature, especially the big cats, so quite a few of these were asleep.  The ones that were awake seemed zoned out or terribly bored – it was impossible to tell which.  Of course they could have been cat-napping.

The zoo has a ‘Skyfari’ gondola which runs from one end to the other giving an aerial view.  We had decided that since the polar bears were off-exhibit we would catch this back to the beginning instead of going past the bears.  Unfortunately the queue was ridiculous.  Not being the most patient of people, we walked after all – only to find that not only were the polar bears on-exhibit after all, they were out playing in the water seemingly having a wonderful time.  We stayed and watched for ages, they are so graceful in the water.  Nearby they also had the most beautiful Arctic fox.

It was great to see the rhino up close, as we had only had distant views at the Safari Park.  Sadly the bears were mostly asleep so we only had glimpses of the grizzlies. 

One of the most interesting things was an exhibit where they have either cheetahs or Arctic wolves – it was a cheetah while we were there.  This fellow was in the enclosure with a domestic dog – this was his buddy, and stops him from becoming agitated.  Basically, if the dog is happy, the cat is happy.  So the dog was off in the corner snoozing, and the cheetah came right up to the fence to show off.

All-in-all, while it is a pretty amazing place I think that Wellington Zoo is doing a better job of providing habitats as close to natural for the animals as possible.  Wellington Zoo is doing away with a lot of the smaller exhibits which characterised San Diego Zoo in favour of getting biiger, more natural habitats for the animals.  Of course, Wellington is much smaller and have a fraction of the species and so maybe that means they have more time to spend on getting it right.

We spent over six hours at the zoo, so it was time to head to Old Town and hunt some dinner of our own.  Old Town is very much set up for tourists, lots of quaint shops selling old-timey stuff and souvenirs.  We arrived too late for the museum-type places but we still found some pretty interesting things to read about the early days of San Diego.

We went to Pizza Bella for dinner – apparently one of Old town’s best-kept secrets.  They have America’s best pizza (title won in a nation-wide televised competition so it must be true).  We tried it and it was certainly delicious.

By the time we got home we were exhausted; that’s why this blog entry is late.