San Diego Zoo
21 September 2009
• San Diego
by Amber

Hey first off, Welcome little Kadence Dunn - Congratulations Cory and Camille - she is beautiful!!! I can't wait to meet her.
Monday we went to the zoo. New parents, this is a little lesson we learned. Do not hype your two year old up for 2 days before a big event. Big Mistake. Sunday 3.30am and Monday 4am Carden was wide awake yelling "Mummy...Daddy...Go to zoo?...see monkeys?" Ugh!
We got an early start (as you can imagine) and were there when the zoo opened at 9am. It was pretty amazing. We took the "Monkey Trail" first and had loads of fun watching the monkeys climb and swing. It's really well laid out and has upper and lower paths so you really feel like you are walking in a treetop jungle. The apes were cute and the little baby ape was really hamming it up for the crowd.
Next we had a look at the hippos, which Carden loved, and the Polar Bear which was really really cute (behind 3 inches of glass).
The Zoo has a gondola Skyride which was a welcome breeze and took up over the park to the kids area, playground and boring goats at the petting zoo. (Maplewood Farm goats are much more exciting). We saw gorgeous Flamingo's and a sleepy Panda Bear.
We ate the most disgusting lunch ever at the burger shack, regretted a $5 bag of cotton candy and then headed back on the Skyride to see the much hyped Elephant Odyssey.
The most impressive thing about the Elephant display is the engineering that went into the cages. A massive steel monstrosity with bars 10 inches wide and electronic doors that squeeze the elephants from the cleaning area to the feeding area and then out to their 7 acre paddock complete with concrete "shade trees". Really quite sad actually. I think I may be have been a bit spoiled by staying at the Elephant Sanctuary in Thailand 3 years ago where we fed 10 elephants from a raised bamboo platform and then walked them down to the river for a bath. There were no cages or concrete palm trees and the elephants just wandered the property freely. (Hmmm, actually seems quite dangerous now I think about it)
We popped in to give our regards to Mr Giraffe and his family and then left the zoo at 2pm EXHAUSTED. Another lesson learned: Carden will scream bloody murder to walk by himself everywhere in San Diego EXCEPT the zoo where he is very clear about being carried.
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