On Saturday 22 September we went to the other half of the "World Famous San Diego Zoo", the San Diego Wild Animal Park. It is about 20-30miles north east of San Diego.

Jo had done her research and so when we arrived we went straight to the tram. The tram took us on a 1hour, 5mile trip around the park. The tour guide had a great sense of humour, and was very knowledgeable - he talked about the huge number of births, the way the males have a group of females that are theirs and that they protect. He also described the way the animals all look out for each other, and how some have following tags (white behind). For example, the Impala, have a unique behind and recognise each others like we would recognise a face. From this tour we saw that the park has a central large area which houses animals (herbivors) from East Africa, and then there are smaller (but still larger than zoos) areas containing carnivors or the more territorial or agressive animals (eg some Zebras which will trample an intruder to death), or those that require a special type of environment.

One area, a hillside, had been fenced off for mountain sheep and goats. It was very bare, and the tour guide said that it had originally looked like the areas adjacent to it, and the sheep and goats had eaten it bare in a matter of weeks. When the tram pulled up next to the fence we looked up the hillside and could only see a couple of sheep and goats, but then looking harder, we discovered that they were in nooks and crannies all across the hillside - the tour guide asked if anyone could count the 62 animals (not including the squirrels, of which there were a proliferation).

Further on the tram passed an area where were asked to be quiet. The tour guide told us that there were Bonobos (member of the great ape family) and that they were not accustomed to lots of humans and noise. There were two sitting at the top of a small grassy rise and one of them was standing on its head!

After the tram ride we went into an avairy where there were many rainbow Lorikeets which, if one had purchased Lorikeet food, would come and land on ones arm and eat the food. We just watched with amazement as they landed on people - some had three birds just on one arm! They were also quite noisy.

We saw a family of gorillas, and at one point two of the young gorillas were playing with each other, sitting on and wrestling each other. Their mother saw this, and just came and sat right next to them and they became less agressive. She didn't say anything to them, just sat there. They did seem to be having much fun.

After watching the Asian Elephant show, where the elephants balanced on logs and lifted heavy weights and had an all round good time, we went and had lunch. We sat on a seat overlooking the East Africa area. Apart from the occasional wifts of animal dung, it was a very pleasant spot to sit and watch the animals roam freely about.

After lunch we walked up to Condor Pass, past the Sumartran Tiger and Lions (who were hiding from the hot sun) to an area that looked out over the park. There was also some aviaries with different birds, and there were the condors. The condors have bald heads and very large bodies and wings. We're told that they, and other carrion birds, have bald heads because when they feed they get blood and stuff on their heads and if they did have feathers it would become a mess and possibly cause illness.

On the way back down from the pass we looked at two different plant buildings - one full of bonsai and the other Epiphyllum, a particular species cactus with pretty flowers, though they were not in bloom and it looked very plain (we've since discovered that they flower at night and by morning the flower is dead). We also passed the African Elephants who had just arrived from Swaziland and were still in the 30day quarantine and so we had to view them from behind a plexiglass window.

We then walked down to the other end of the park to the Heart of Africa area hoping to see the other large cats. They were hiding and all we saw were more birds and Jo's favourite animal at the moment, the Okapi, which looks like a cross between a zebra and a horse but it is closely related to the giraffe.

There wasn't much time left and so we went to watch the bird show, which had been recommended to us. We saw a number of talking and singing birds and a beatiful hawk that appeared from a cage underneath a small blimp and dived at great speed down to a piece of meat its handler was holding. They also did the money retrieval trick with an "intelligent" gallah -an audience member near the back was asked to hold out a folded greenback and the gallah flew up, collected the money and returned to its handler, who then tried convincing other members of the audience to part with their money likewise. Of course it was part of the fun, and soon the gallah was instructed to return the money to the owner which it did. They also had an emu which walked around the stage area and they said that it had taken so long just to train it to do this.

After checking in to our hotel in Oceanside we were undecided about dinner and so we drove a couple of blocks to the town centre and saw that there was a beautiful sunset happening. We watched, and took photos, of the sunset and the pier and then bought some Chinese takeaway and went back to our hotel. Whilst driving we noticed all these signs showing directions to parking and shuttle services for Harbourdays and decided we should check it out on Sunday.