My uncle, free on Wednesdays, decided to take me down to San Diego for a one day trip. From what I heard San Diego Zoo was the biggest zoo around so I got excited to see what animals it had. A drive to San Diego from Los Angeles takes about 2 hours+, usually 2 and a half hours due to traffic conditions (but still, car pool lane yo). We had plans to visit other places after the zoo, so it was important that we got there early for us to spend the whole day at San Diego. Which was why, we left at 6am. I only slept 3 hours the night before because for some unknown reason I could not get myself to sleep. Thus I downed a can of Monster before I left for San Diego.
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| Early morning on the freeway |
We only had a piece of bread before we left, so somewhere in between we stopped at a cafe in Oceanside called 101 Cafe. This is another place where they serve the typical american breakfast, and I ordered something called "Pile Up". They slice up sausages into small cubes, fry them with a couple of eggs, and put it over a nice load of hash browns. It was so delicious, and SO filling that it managed to keep me from feeling hungry until about 3pm+.
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| Pile Up! |
After breakfast we decided to take a short drive around Oceanside before we continued our journey to San Diego. As its name suggests, Oceanside is by the ocean (duh) and early in the morning the weather was really nice. The sun wasn't that intense, and the ocean breeze was just mesmerizing to the touch. There were lots of people jogging by the coast and there were surfers! The waves were not really big, but they were big enough for some casual surfing.
After about an hour's drive from Oceanside, we finally arrived at the San Diego Zoo. It opens at 9am and we arrived at around 9-ish. Despite being early (sort of), the place was already very crowded, and I could see a lot of children on their school field trips/summer vacation camps or whatever they call it. The price for entry to the San Diego Zoo is 42$ per adult. They even let you upgrade your pass to a year pass so that you can enter the zoo as many times as you want within a year of the purchase, just like Disneyland. Why people want to visit the zoo everyday, I'm not sure. I might actually do it if I didn't live that far away but the sad truth is so.
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| Main sign of the San Diego Zoo |
Upon entry to the zoo, we were given a map of the zoo to help us get around. From the map I could see that there were a variety of animals. I was kinda excited when I saw the map. Whether I was as excited or not afterwards, that's up to you to read on to find out. Here's a picture of the map:
The planned out route between us is:
Discovery Outpost -> Lost Forest -> Northern Frontier -> Elephant Odyssey -> Outback -> Africa Rocks -> Urban Jungle -> Asian Passage -> EXIT
Not exactly the best planning but whatever, we had lots of time.
The first stop that we went to was none other than the Reptile House. I wanted to save the best for last, but since we stumbled upon it so early might as well go see the reptiles while its still cooling in the morning. By afternoon the heat would be so intense that the reptiles might go into hiding and cool themselves. The Reptile House here displays a good number of venomous snakes, especially rattlesnakes and pit vipers. I was surprised by the variety of the aforementioned snakes here, and I got to see an Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake for the first time - the largest rattlesnake ever. Another snake that I got to see for the first time was the Anaconda. Yes, they have one here, but it isn't a large one and it was all coiled up on a tree branch in the corner, so I didn't get a good shot of it. But still, first time is a first time :) I hope to see a larger, bulkier Anaconda in the future, and I wonder when that will be ...
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| Entrance to the Reptile House |
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A Mang Mountain Pit Viper. Beautiful green coloration for a snake.
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At the back of the Reptile House was a Reptile Walk which included another similar animal species - the amphibians. When you think of amphibians, you'd only think of frogs which was the case. I was hoping to maybe see some newts but they didn't have any. I was completely fooled by the crocodile display here - not a single large croc to be found, only small ones and they were Gharials. There are also tortoises and turtles in the Reptile Walk, and there were more long necked-turtles than anything else in those small aquariums. The main attraction in the Reptile Walk was definitely the display of Galapagos Tortoises there. These things are MASSIVE and can reach almost 6 feet in length. They can live more than a 100 years, and in fact some of the tortoises here are older than that. I'll let the pictures do the talking.
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| The skeleton of the Gharial |
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| 2 tortoises making love. I'm sorry, is this a bad time? |
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| An artist painting. There are a few of these people here. |
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| The Galapagos Tortoises. |
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| They weren't kidding - it was burning. |
After this we proceeded to the Lost Forest area, and at the first part we were greeted with a really pink sight (no, not SNSD) - bunch of Flamingos! There was, however, a single flamingo that stood out in the crowd because it was grey. Flamingo chicks are born with grey feathers as a form of camouflage, and once they reach a certain age, they shed these grey feathers off to reveal the pink ones that you always see.
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| The little Flamingo chick is in the middle. |
Deeper in, another bit of the forest that caught my attention was the display of carnivorous plants. There were only 2 types on display here - the Pitcher plant, and the infamous Venus Fly Trap. Carnivorous plants thrive on insects and sometimes even small animals such as frogs, hence the name carnivorous. The Pitcher plant is a passive plant and makes use of its sweet scent to lure prey near its "mouth". Prey that do land on its mouth will find themselves stuck and slowly slide down into a pool of digestive acids where nutrients are absorbed by the Pitcher. Most of you know how the Venus Fly Trap looks like - two leaves with sharp spikes that resemble "teeth", and the overall plant resembles a jaw that is always open. The triggers for the Venus Fly Trap to close its mouth are little sensitive hairs on the inner part of the leaf. Once triggered, the open, safe-looking plant instantly transforms into a death trap.
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| Venus Fly Traps in the middle and the Pitcher plants around them. |
In the Lost Forest were also primates - the monkeys, gorillas, and orangutans. While the monkeys were actively swinging around, the gorillas and orangutans were nowhere to be seen. As the heat was getting intense, I guess these animals decided to stay in hiding. There was also the Malayan Tapir (pride of being a Malaysian) on display, and lets not forget that massive hippopotamus. One of the huge disappointments was the Tiger Trail - only a single tiger was on display, and to make it worse, a Malayan Tiger. I come all the way from Malaysia just to see a Malayan Tiger. Yeah, like I haven't seen one already. I feel like they should at least put one more tiger in there, it looks so lonely just walking alone by itself. Talk about being forever alone.
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| Hippo! |
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| More Gharials in the aquarium next to the Hippo's. |
At the Northern Frontier, they had some Polar Bears! Unfortunately for us, it was getting hot like I said, and there was only one polar bear in sight, at the far corner too. The others were hiding. I just decided to wander around the area and see the other fun facts on display.
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| I might be tall, but I'm only half the height of the world's largest land predator. |
Towards the end of the zoo, they focused on showcasing some of the animals of the past (just displaying skulls, skeletons and the like) and they even made a really close model of a tar pit. Some of these animals "of the past" were the ancestors of the modern day big cats and elephants, aka the saber-toothed cats and the massive mammoth. This part of the zoo was very near the Elephant Odyssey where the elephants roamed in wide open spaces. Once again, due to the heat, the elephants were more crowded towards the shady areas of the enclosure.
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| The fake tar pit, using water. |
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| Southern California 12,000 years ago. |
Other than all the things I mentioned above, the rest of the zoo seemed pretty much like any other zoo you would visit. Bears, giraffes, camels, foxes, deer, zebras, birds, etc. Our time at the zoo ended at around 1pm-ish, and we departed for the museum area.
The San Diego Zoo was in an area called Balboa Park, and all the museums are located within this park, making it a very famous tourist attraction, as demonstrated by the great difficulty in securing a parking space. Back in Malaysia I would see triple parking, but if you do that here you'll get your ass handed to you, so all the parking is really neat and tidy.
Our first stop was the Spanish Village Art Center, just right across the Natural History Museum which was our second destination. Due to it being an art center, the entire village was painted in very bright and cheerful colors. In the village were various arts and crafts such as paintings, pottery, stones/minerals and sculptures (they even have a sculptor's guild).
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| Colorful and cheerful, no? |
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| Some of the sculpting guild's work. |
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| *kick* |
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| Another portion of the sculptor guild's work |
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| Making glass in the furnace, and the product. |
The next stop was the Natural History Museum. In front of the museum is a ginormous tree that is almost 100 years old. I thought this museum might be different and hopefully I'd be interested. Turns out it was just like any other museum and was relatively small and boring. Aside from the dinosaur part of the museum (which is my main interest in a museum) the rest were just mediocre or below average for me. There is a section dedicated to only horses and their history which didn't really piqued my interest. They have a 3D theater but that was just one main difference I could find.
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| The Natural History Museum |
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| The huge tree. More information below. |
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| The skeleton of an Allosaurus. |
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| A life sized Megalodon, predecessor of the modern day Great White Shark. |
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| Kids are supposed to draw skulls on this board, but idk why that Saranghae Chubed was there. |
Balboa Park is a place where they maintain the design of buildings of the old. The Park by itself is already a good walk. Adding on the museums and the zoo, its a very good spot for a one day trip.
Our last destination of the day was the Air and Space Museum. In the museum are various models of air planes, jets, and even Apollo. Its more for the type who is interested in aeroplanes and aeronautical stuff. Not my main interest, but it was the next best place to go compared to the other museums. In fact, there was an exhibition on torture devices in one of the museums but they needed an entrance fee. I really wanted to see it ):
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