Zoo Adventure!

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Once again, people are waiting to use the computer and, once again, I'm super tired so this will have to be brief.

Today we went to the Taronga Zoo here in Sydney. It was super cool, but Sydney is experiencing a heat wave right now so it was suuuuuuper hot. I don't know how hot it was in actual degrees, but we were drenched in sweat before we even arrived at the gates. We took the train to the Circular Quay, where we bought a "zoo pass" which includes the ferry ride to the zoo, zoo admission, and a ride on the sky safari (a cable car thing that goes above the zoo). The ferry ride to the zoo was really nice and gave us great views of the harbour, while allowing us to snap some token pictures of such landmarks as the Sydney Opera House and that big bridge which they launched all the fireworks off of during the Olympics. As soon as we got to the zoo we realized we were hungry and dying of thirst. Then we realized that a small kids meal cost $8.50 and a bottle of water cost $3!! Then we realized we were idiots for not realizing this would be the case and bringing our own food and drink. We thought we could persivear without rehydration and refueling and tried to fight on through the "Wild Australia" exhibit. We saw such old time favourites as wallabies, kangaroos, koalas, and our emmense favourites: the platypus!!!! The Platys were our favs because they were sooo cute, really funny to watch, and they were located in an air conditioned, covered inclosure. We watched them for so long. They're much smaller in real life than we thought they would be. The're about... mmm... 10 inches long I guess. It was shortly after this time that we realized we could not go on without getting food and drink, so we entered the emmensly expensive Treetop Cafe. We were able to get an amazing table though with a positively gorgeous view of the Sydney Harbour. I should tell you that the zoo is located all along a big hill overlooking the harbour. It's a nice setup, so long as you only go DOWN and don't decide you want to look at something back up the mountain. We never went back to the Platys because they were up near the top.

Anyway, we sat at this table for sooooo long waiting for this new guy (it was his first day on the job) to come and take our order. He was taking forever and we were starting to get really annoyed. Then we asked someone, and it turned out we were supposed to go up to the front and order ourselves. Whoops! Oh well, by sitting there for so long we discovered a free jug of precious, precious water. That savings of $3 each almost made up for the inflated prices of the food we did get. I had delicous "Platypus Pancakes" which were filled with blueberries and served with vanilla ice cream. Mmmm I could go for some more Platypus Pancakes right now. We've barely been eating anything because we don't like spending the money to do so. We had a tasty supper at a pizza place right near our hostel tonight, but none of us were really full afterwards.

Anyways, after our Treetop feast we were ready to go again. We saw lots of cool animals--they have almost everything there. Lions, tigers, kodiak bears, penquins, a HUGE tourtois (turtle thing-I can't spell it), a massive gorilla exhibit with really active gorillas (both baby and huge), red pandas... I could go on and on. They also had a really amazing bird show, where various owls and hawks skimmed our heads as the trainer taught us all about them. Eventually we had seen all there was to see and we took the ferry back to downtown Sydney. On the ferry, Derek got spit on by a little boy. Hehehehe it was so funny. When he thought the parents weren't looking he tried to wipe the spit on me (I also got spit on but didn't care) and the parents noticed and were completely mortified that the little guy had done it because he'd been misbehaving the whole trip. We weren't too concerned about it but the parents kept trying to get the little boy to say sorry, but he was too intimidated by us to say anything. It was really funny.

We wandered around for awhile looking for flip flips for Mark and supper for all of us, but the search was fruitless so we decided to just head back to Newtown where our hostel was located. On the way back we happened upon a huge tent with this random Ferrari exhibit trying to pedal Shell V-Force fuel. Mark got to drive a race car simulator! He wrecked his car though. Hehe.

At 8:30 we walked to where my mom is staying (she flew in this morning) and touched bases with here. We'll be meeting for supper tomorrow. The 3 of us plan on going back to Bondi Beach tomorrow, then we'll meet up with Mom at 6.

OK, I'm getting dirty looks, I've really got to go. Sorry for no pictures. If Mom's figured out the internet by tomorrow I'll download some on to her computer and post them. Thanks for the comments!

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