On the road: The wild life

Last night in San Diego and Christmas Eve approaching, Rex suggested we do the San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park at night. Mind you, I had already been at the perfectly nice zoo at Balboa Park on a previous trip (pandas!) so who knew there was another zoo a few miles away? Plus there was a 'Festival of Lights' going on in honor of the holidays so on to the park it was...

San Diego has been unusually cold and rainy during my two-week stay and since the wild animal park is inland it was certainly a bit chilly. So it might have been Southern California but the cold spell certainly went with the holiday spirit.

We got there in time to take a night safari where we were warned about the wilderness surrounding us, but the most dangerous thing that happened was the safari bus almost toppling off the road when the driver took a curve a bit too fast. Other than that, the tour started off on a down note when we learned this is one of only ten rhinos of this breed and that they might very well be extinct within the next fifty years - and this one, at least, is too old to mate.

It was dark so I couldn't capture many other images but it seemed we were disturbing a lot of them from nappy time, including this giraffe. Still, our guide kept making sure we knew that the park is a happening place, with gazelles, okapis, giraffes and zebras boinking all day long and producing hundreds of offspring (ok, he didn't use the word 'boinking', he said 'mating').

All in all, a very nice outing for my last night in San Diego, although I was disappointed the balloon ride was closed at night.

Not the best picture, but here's Rex (right) and I (left) after the tour. Rex blogged the wildlife outing here. He has way more pictures of pretty Christmas lights than I do.