A Zoo
08 Mar 2025
We're here, approximately 5 hours and 2 winks of sleep later...
So jet-lagged and super tired, we went to the Zoo!
Obviously we had to be second in line at the Jungle Java cafe in the park.
From there, we went on a safari.
The San Diego Zoo has really cool Koala exhibit. There was even a joey, but we couldn't get a good shot of him.
We next wandered over to the Elephant Odyssey.
On the way to the elephants, we got to see a California Condor up close! It was with a couple of ravens too.
California CondorAt the Grand Canyon we caught a ranger talk about the California Condor. We learned that they are extremely endangered but are one of the success stories in conserving species. Through research they figured out how to raise condors in captivity and release them into the wild to grow the population.
Conservationists learned that they can steal the first egg that a condor pair lays. The condors will then lay a second egg, doubling the amount of eggs that each pair will lay per mating cycle.
This has vastly improved the California Condor numbers over the years, growing from just 20 condors in the wild to over 500 nowadays.
There were a bunch of birds and turtles on the way to the elephants too!
Oh there they are!
We found some Cabybaras next to the elephant habitat.
Then we ran into a Lion taking a nap.
After seeing if the lion would wake up, we continued on to find another lion. This one was from the mountains!
The polar bear plunge was next and had 3 polar bears, though we only got good shots of two of them, though the one
bear was really posing!
The zoo also happens to be a pretty good botanical garden. They have flowers and other native plants in every habitat, aligned to the home of the animals they have in the area.
We went to see the Leopards after the polar bears, and they had their own cat walks!
From there, we got to see one of the Pandas at the zoo! She was chowing down on some bamboo.
There was a red panda right next door that was pretty shy.
Moving down the trail, we found hippos!
Entering the rainforest, we saw a Tiger who was very interested in what they were doing in the den
After lunch, we went to the reptile house and found a bunch of cool snakes and lizards!
Next door, they had an aviary with some really cool birds. The star of the show was definitely the one bird with 3 eggs in a nest!
After seeing the little birds, we thought we should go see a big one! They had a wildlife ambassador show with an Andean Condor that flew over the crowd!
Andean CondorThe Andean Condor is a cousin of the California Condor from South America. It has a wingspan up to ten and a half feet wide!
We had a fun trek back across the zoo to see some bears, but the Grizzly Bears were even more tired than us!
Finally we trekked through the African Safari and found a Leopard that was very agitated!
We were really fading by that time so we headed out to crash and slept super well, having walked over 17,000 steps on just 2 winks of sleep!