Day 23 - San Diego

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Enjoyed a yummy cooked breakfast courtesy of Homewood Suites this morning before heading out for our day at the famous San Diego Zoo located in Balboa Park.

Decided to take the narrated double-decked tram tour of the zoo first to get an idea of what's what which was very informative and probably saved our feet from a few miles of walking.

First stop after that was the Panda's - and for the first time ever we got to see them awake and active. Every other time we have been to a zoo with Pandas all we got to see was their hairy butts, so this was a real bonus. These guys are very very cute, but they were not our favourites.

This for me, the best were the Gorillas. The San Diego Zoo has a fairly large family of gorillas including a humungous silver back male, a couple of mothers nursing their babies as well as several jeuveniles. Fortunately for us they were all having a snooze right down by the viewing glass when we saw them and although they weren't active we spent ages just watching them, completely mesmerized by how human-like they appeared.

Other really great exhibits were; The Polar Bears playing with their toys in the pool, the Orangutans putting on a comedy show, The Hippo's walking around on the bottom of the lagoon, the Snakes enjoying a lunch of rats and mice (ewwwww) and the baby Tigers playing a game of chasing. Of course Jordi's favourites were the Giraffes which included a two week old baby and Ashleigh's was the Rhino's.

All in all I would give this zoo only a 7 out of 10. To me they had an aweful lot of animals in really old fashioned small enclosures which was quite sad to see and not what I expected of a zoo with this one's reputation.

On the way home we decided to take a detour out to Point Loma to take in a great view of the city from the lighthouse at the entrance to the harbour. After taking a few wrong turns, finally found the right road (which was right thru one of the many millitary bases around San Diego) and spent half and hour snapping photo's before calling it a day.

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