Day 55 - A day at the Zoo!

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Today, we had planned to visit the National Zoo, so we were up fairly early at around 8:30am. We went down for some breakfast first, once again having the usual toast and jam, before coming back to the room to get ready properly. We knew that the zoo was quite far away (not close enough to walk to anyway), so we checked which lines we needed to get on the metro map that we had picked up on our first day here.

We eventually set out of the hostel at around 10:30am, and walked down the road to the 'Foggy Bottom' (still find this quite funny) metro station. We caught the blue line to 'Metro Center' station, before hopping onto the red line to the station by the zoo. We stepped off the metro and stepped onto the longest escalator in the world - we thought that we might just step out onto a cloud at the end!

Once we had reached daylight again, we spotted a sign pointing down the road towards the zoo, so we set off in that direction. After around a 10 minute walk, we arrived at the zoo and walked through the gates. Once again, as the zoo is owned by the Smithsonian Institution, admission is absolutely free, there were not even any sort of booths or anything at the entrance, once you had walked under the big 'Zoo' sign, you were in!

We picked up a map from the visitor centre just off the main path, and decided to head first to see the Giant Pandas - mainly because neither of us had never seen a panda in real life before, but also as they were apparently the star attraction of this zoo! We walked around the path, walking past some cheetahs - who were avidly watching a few zebras in the enclosure right next door - and eventually came to a sign pointing us in the direction of the pandas. We also noticed a small animal run just in front of us on the path and into a bush. Intrigued as to what it was (it looked smaller than a squirrel, although there were loads of them around), we watched the area to where it ran and saw it eventually emerge, realising that it was a little chipmunk! Over the course of the day, we realised that the zoo must have released a load of chipmunks to just roam around the zoo as we kept spotting the little critters running around!

Anyway, We walked down the path and entered the indoor viewing area for the pandas. Straight away, we spotted a large panda bear sitting on some rocks, munching on some bamboo - exactly what we thought they would be doing! We watched him for a while as he carefully stripped all of the leaves off each bamboo shoot, before twisting them around so that he could eat them all bunched up - we guessed it gave them a bit more substance and a bit more to chew on! We were a little amused when one woman exclaimed to her child that he was eating "eucalyptus" leaves. We moved on to the next window, where we found another giant panda doing exactly the same thing! Eventually they both seemed to just eat themselves to sleep, with each of them just slumping over a rock in exhaustion from all of that eating!

The last window housed a bunch of red pandas (who apparently are not related to the other pandas at all - in fact, they are more closely related to racoons), who were all lying around sleeping, and generally not doing much! We left the indoor viewing house and followed the path around the outdoor viewing areas, where of course there were no pandas as they were both inside, fast asleep! The path (which was called the 'Asia Trail' eventually lead us past other animals, such as Asian elephants, some otters, a leopard and a sloth bear (who apparently either didn't like the sun in his eyes as he slept or didn't want his picture take, as he had his paw right over his eyes!).

We eventually came to the end of the 'Asia Trail', where we ended up back by the visitor centre. We checked out map and decided to head over to the other side of the zoo, where the monkeys/apes/lions/tigers were. We first came to an eating area, where we bought some food for dinner, although we were being pestered by wasps most of the time whilst eating - there seemed to be loads of them at this zoo! We carried on along the path and eventually came to the 'Small Mammal' house, in which there were various animals such as several different types of monkeys and small rodent-type animals. We took a few pictures here of the different animals, being quite amused by a load of little monkeys climbing over and sitting on a large sloth who was hanging onto a tree, probably trying to get some sleep. A guy who was giving a talk there told us that they often did that in the wild!

We left the 'Small Mammal' house and walked around to where the larger apes lived. We first reached the outdoor viewing area for the gorillas, who were mainly just sitting around not really doing much! We did, however notice a baby gorilla who was running around, noticing that he had gone into an indoor viewing area, which is where we then headed. Inside, the gorillas were a bit more active, with a few of them playing with barrels - one of them was lying on his back rolling the barrel around with his feet, which we thought was pretty impressive! The baby gorilla was also climbing on anything that he could, at one point climbing to the top of the climbing tree in there, before sliding upside down all the way down to the floor (kind of like it was on a zip-line) on a piece of material which was tied to a different tree!

Once we were done watching the gorillas, we moved along to the orangutans, who were also just sitting around mainly, although one was sitting with a cloth on its head, playing with some food in its mouth - it kept putting a bit of food on the edge of its lip, before sticking it out as far as it could go so that it could see it - it's hard to explain but it was pretty funny! We next went to the 'Think Tank' - a building where they research primate cognition. Although there was no research actually taking place when we got there, apparently they test things such as the memories and thinking skills of the apes (mainly the orangutans), using treats and techniques such as conditioned learning. It was all pretty interesting, and we were particularly surprised by the fact that, for the orangutans to actually get to the building, they were able to cross ropes above the heads of visitors on the paths in between the buildings as and when they wanted to - all of the research was 'voluntary' apparently! When we got back outside, we could see the ropes where they would cross, and read a board which explained that it was perfectly safe for them to do so - it would just be like them crossing a forest canopy in the wild and that they were very unlikely to fall whilst doing it. Unfortunately, we didn't actually see any orangutans making use of this while we were there (we couldn't imagine them ever being bothered to actually climb up there in the first place), but it would be pretty cool to see if they did!

Next to the 'Think Tank' building was the reptile house, so we had a walk around, looking at the different lizards, snakes, tortoises/turtles, crocodiles and frogs that were in there. Once out, we checked the map and next navigated ourselves towards the lions and tigers. We first came to a tiger, who was seemingly fast asleep - although when we took a photo, when we zoomed in we could see that its eyes were actually open! We walked around the island and came to a large pride of lions, who were surprisingly quite active - from previous experience at zoos, lions spend most of their time lying around asleep! There seemed to be quite a lot of younger lions (some of them had manes just forming, so we knew that they couldn't be very old) who were running around and play fighting with each other, which was quite entertaining to watch! We took some photos and videos, before walking back around to leave the area. However, as we walked past the tiger enclosure again, we noticed that it had woken up and was running around, jumping into bushes and seemingly trying to get its scent everywhere that it could! We watched him for a while, before deciding to call it a day and head towards the exit - it was approaching 4pm and we had seen pretty much seen everything at the zoo now. We passed some Prairie Dogs as we walked, which were just little fat round balls of fur, and also a large frog pond, before eventually reaching the exit.

We popped into a shop opposite the zoo so that Craig could pick up a postcard for his aunty, before walking back up the street to the metro station. We got back on the red line, followed by the orange line to get back to the station by our hostel. We got back to the room and took the netbook down to the lobby to try and reserve our seats for our plane tomorrow, and to also check the times and fares of the train that we need to catch to get to the airport in the morning. Satisfied that there was nothing more that we could do to prepare for tomorrow (other than pack!), Emma went back up to the room to play her DS whilst Craig stayed downstairs for a while watching Minecraft videos. At one point, Craig came up to the room to fetch Emma to show her the car that had somehow set on fire right outside the door of the hotel! The fire brigade had arrived so most of the fire had been put out by the time she got down, but it took them a while to fully put out the fire which was still burning under the bonnet! We're not too sure what started the fire, or whose car it actually was, but eventually the fire was put out (although the firemen didn't actually ever get the bonnet up!), so we came back up to the room.

We packed our cases, just leaving out stuff that we need to get ready in the morning, and watched TV most of the night (mainly Family Guy, which was on for 3 hours straight on one channel!). Tomorrow, we fly to Orlando!

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