In the Jungle

Finally it was zoo time. Last time I came it was 2014 so decently recent. Once again organizing the trip was difficult. Almost ended up being just three people even though so quite a few people were invited but couldn't come. Picking a public holiday is a good choice because people have the day off. However this also means that people probably have their own things on. Also if the public holiday is on a Monday or Friday it means long weekend. That means possible trips away. So many people had to turn down coming. And this is why I usually just ask one person and only ask another if that person can't turn up. Easier to work out. Anyhow by some situation in the end there were six people who ended up coming. However they came at very differing times ...

Original plan was to meet at 11:00, having had an early lunch, at the front gate of Melbourne Zoo, four of us. This was not the case. Me and another friend wanted to go earlier so we planned on meeting up earlier at my house. However late the previous night we got a message from the other two that they were going to meet at 12:00 instead. Because the message was sent late and the other friend I was going with was an early sleeper I thought we would work it out the in the morning. In the morning we worked out that we would go just slightly earlier so we can see more. Because of the later meeting time we instead turned up at 11:15. A tad later than initially planned because of ANZAC day parade and time grabbing lunch. So we drifted around waiting for the other. We then get the message that they would arrive closer to 1:00 ... With just two of us we got to move through many of the animals quite quickly so wasn't too bad. We went through the smaller enclosures first just in case we didn't have time to go through later. Skipped some gimmicky stuff just in case we came back so would be funnier, however we didn't. I'll try find the turtle shell photo. It will be posted below if otherwise.

1:00 came and still they weren't here. It was only round 1:35 when the other two arrived. We backtracked a bit through some things we saw bit it was still fun. A maybe was coming ended up coming at 2:25 dragging another friend so we ended up in a group of 6. Because during grouping up times some of us saw different things the choice of what to see next was just what everyone hadn't seen yet. Because there was 6 people now, often the group ended up detached. Wasn't as bad as last time where we were completely split up but we had to wait for stragglers. Problem was 4:30 coming up fast. 4:30 was when they started closing the enclosure areas. The last area we were going to was just about to close. Me and early comer were just in as they closed the front entrance. The middle comers had really wanted to come in however had been shut out. We had no idea where they were so we planned on taking photos for them. We found out once in they came in from the exit side ... so in the end it worked out.

What I looked forward to seeing was the lions and lemurs. When I last came the lion exhibit was still in construction and the lemurs had not arrived even though their pen had been completed. It was good to see both these two were finally set up. However the big cats and bears enclosures were in construction ... for another trip I guess. I finally used my SLR that I've had around for like years. I've lent it out a couple of times but never really used it myself. We were talking about how you can never capture a picture as high quality as the one they put on advertising for the Melbourne Zoo. I don't really mess around with my camera so I wasn't planning on capturing anything like that. However in the bird cage I managed to get the camera to focus really well ... but as I was pressing the button the bird flew away. Here is the failed photo that I will always cherish ...
 

It was a fun time looking at the animals and taking photos, maybe next time we do the other zoos or even go interstate. But that wasn't the end of the day ... but I'll post the rest in the next blog post.