Saturday-It was zoo day. I was looking forward to going to the zoo the entire trip. We took a fast ferry to the entrance to the Taronga Zoo.
It was located on a large hill on the other side of the harbor. Once we showed our tickets, which some friends of dads got for us for free, we made our way to the gondola. Since it was on a hill, we rode a gondola up to the top entrance and worked our way down. I saw elephants on the ride up and got super excited. Once we got to the top, we got off the gondola, and made our way down to the entrance. The lady gave us a map and a stamp and we were on our way.
The zoo itself had several different pathways that you could choose from to explore. Our first stop was called the Australian walkabout. This pathway included some native birds, kangaroos, wallabies, wombats, koalas, and emu. The interesting thing about this zoo is that for some of their animals, they chose to have open enclosures. For example, the kangaroo exhibit was inside a large area that was fenced, but the people went into that area and walked on a pathway around where the kangaroos were hanging out. But no major fences or pieces of glass were keeping the kangaroos from coming up to you. Once we finished the first path, we then went over to the main path that went through the zoo.
On this path we saw the male elephant, (which was kept separate from the other elephants at a different enclosure), some monkeys, and lemurs. The lemurs are much like the kangaroos, however, their enclosure has more gates to get inside. A zoo keeper was doing guided tours through the small enclosure, so we waited in line for about a half an hour to get our turn. When it finally was our turn, the lemurs must of heard or saw something they didn’t like because they were all making a very loud sound when we came in. Once they calmed down, the zoo keeper told us that they were all male, and that they loved to sleep in the afternoon.
Once we finished with the lemurs, we got back on the path on our way to go see the gorillas and check when the next seal show would be. The gorillas were behind glass and had several different rooms that they could walk between. They were being kind of shy, and we only saw a mom and her baby in the last room.
By this point we decided to go get some light lunch at their food market. We ended up sharing a burger and slurpee. The seal show was after lunch. In the show, they have a big tank with some platforms and such that the seal swim in. They would bring each seal out individually, and the seal would then do a trick or something. The biggest seal they had was over 200 pounds!
Since we were close to the rainforest trail, that’s where we headed next. This trail had more birds, monkeys, deer, hippos, otters and pandas which we couldn’t see. From there, we went up the hill to the reptiles, and stopped to see the crocodiles on the way. The reptile walk had several different kinds of snakes, a Komodo dragon, more crocs, and frogs. And to finish the day up since we were getting tired, we briefly walked by the giraffes down to the seal walk which led to the exit. The seal walk had the seals we saw in the show earlier, penguins, and pelicans.
We exited though a gift shop, and made our way back to the ferry. We made our way back to the hotel to drop off bags and rest a little but before heading out to Darling Harbour to find food and watch some more Vivid. The only problem was that 30,000 of our friends were there as well. We walked all along the harbor trying to find something to eat. With no such luck, we walked up on the bridge to watch a laser on water show. We were far away enough that we lost interest quickly and continued our search. We walked down on the other side, still with no luck. This time we were on the other side of the harbor, and there was a different show going on. The show had water and fire with music playing in the background. It was much more entertaining to watch.
Now starting to get hungry, we searched online and found this Thai place a couple blocks away. However, when we got there, the wait was at least an hour or more. So with that we walked back down to the harbor and decided to go to a Greek place Dad found earlier. It was alright.
We took the ferry back which ended up taking about 45 minutes. I fell asleep on the ferry.
We walked back to the hotel, and I promptly went to sleep after a long day.