London Zoo

Well James seems to have finally mastered the art of sleeping though the noise of a million trucks going past starting at 5.30 am each morning, but I sure haven't! Up and awake early again! But today was the zoo, which we both have been really looking forward to, and the weather was fantastic!

The zoo was a bit of a hike, we took 3 trains and then a 15 minute walk to get there, but boy was it worth it. The walk was along Camden Loch, which was beautiful, and the zoo was like a million breaths of fresh air after all the crowds and noise around Westminster area.


We had a bit of a scare when we finally got there, because the zoo was the first place my credit card had not worked. None of their machines would accept it and James didn't have any money until he got paid later in the day. The internet connection was really bad and we couldn't transfer any money across from the flat account, and the freaking ATM wouldn't recognise any of our cards!! But alas, one of the staff members came to our rescue with a wireless eftpos machine that they usually use for guidebook purchases only that happily accepted my card. Would have hated to go all that way for nothing, and besides the zoo has ended up being the highlight of the trip so far!!

Since we had already walked across the zoo to the gift shop to try and sort out payment for tickets, we started at the penguin enclosure :)
   
We next made our way through a fully interactive butterfly house where the butterflies were completely free which was pretty amazing, but humid!

The squirrel Monkeys were completely free too, which was just astounding, I have never been to such an interactive zoo before! One of them started to climb up on me, and James sort of got a photo, but the keeper who was supervising asked me to move away from him, otherwise he would actually climb up all over me!

         

The last exhibit before lunch was the creepy crawlies! The leaf cutter ants were SOOOO cool and these were also free to come out on ropes to carry their leaves back to their nest, however there were warnings not to get too close or touch as they bite!!                   

                         

Slightly more contained were:

                                     the locusts.....                                     

                                    the cockroaches....

                                   and the tiny frogs :)

We had decided to take our own picnic lunch to the zoo, so we got to sit under an oak tree with our plastic plates and cups and just enjoy the atmosphere :)

After lunch the highlights were:

                                  the Prairie Dogs and Meercats....

 

the tiger mum and her 3 youngsters....

the Warthogs....

and the Otters... who were all ganging up against one poor fellow!

We saw plenty of other weird and wonderful things at the zoo, which were less photogenic or just didn't make the highlights list on here - the gorilla was pretty astounding, and there were so many different types of exotic birds that we lost count, including a couple of small owls, and some fruit bats. There were some amazing rodents, such as a chinchilla, and giant jumping rats. Most special of all, that I couldn't manage to get a photo of was the Okapi, which is a relative of the giraffe but it looks part zebra. It is extremely endangered and shy. The children wouldn't be quiet enough for it to come out but we managed to see a glimpse of it hiding and saw the striped legs and hips. Here is a picture someone took at Frankfurt zoo...

I then ended the day by promptly falling asleep again.