We finally rented a nice car, and got my new Garmin GPS up and working. With a whole free day before us, Paul and I decided to visit the world renowned San Diego Zoo! This is a positively amazing zoo, with fabulous animal species to see: from reptiles to elephants, gorillas to giant turtles.
But also it has breathtakingly beautiful flora: Palm trees, lush rain forest foliage, and flowers everywhere. Many of the animal environments have their own waterfalls. Most of the animals here seem very happy, enjoying a natural environment with others of their own kind. This zoo actually manages to breed endangered species and returns them to the wild.
There are walk through aviaries with stunning brightly colored birds of all sizes. My favorite was the Hummingbird aviary.
The reptile houses were fascinating, with the 10' long, 350 pound Komodo Dragon (Monitor) as its crowning glory. What an amazing creature! But he was also cautious about showing himself to us, so my photos aren't very impressive.
Polar bears rolled and played in obvious contentment. Sea otters played and showed off for us observers. The Pandas are a favorite to the visitors. We had a special treat seeing a silly Panda that had fallen asleep high in a tree! Very cute. We even got to see Meerkats (who had been born in the zoo and recently came from the nursery) up close.
Waterfowl was everywhere. Paul had to drag me away from the aviary that housed the Harlequin ducks in the coolest "waist level" pond. We could literally reach out and touch these birds (tho we didn't)
We rode high above the Zoo in a tram, and got a better feeling for how huge an area this zoo really encompases.
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