After our morning walk with Sasha we decided to make pancackes. Steph brought her A game as she even made Chocolate Chip Pancackes (see below) for me....yum yum yum!! It was DE-LIC-IOUS!!! Typically on Saturdays we like to get our errands done early and then get out and about, but this day nothing was pressing so we got a very early start and figured we should check out the zoo. It was said to be amongst the best in the world! Let us see??
So the zoo is in fact about 15 mins away from our house, it is near downtown Pretoria. There is rarely any traffic so most of the time it really is just 15 mins. There was one event going on though near the University of Pretoria...we had no idea what was going on, it must have been some kind of parade. It appeared like college gameday back home as all the young students were in groups just hanging out or making a Braii and DRINKING.....was interesting to see...so what normally takes 2 mins to drive past took about 30 mins.
Finally we made it to the zoo and first stop was the Elephants! Upon entering I was amazed at the size of the place and in fact they rent golf carts so you can ride around the zoo in comfort. Seems like a great thing especially if you have kids. Also important to note that the zoo is on an incline and at the very top you have the lions, tigers and bears...oh my! I think this place was at least a few sqaure miles big or even more. People even brought picnic baskets and would just find a tree and spend the day.
Here we see the black Rhino just taking a nap, it was cool because all of them live in open air places and are not caged in. I imagine these are also rescues so they are better off at the zoo. Later we got to see the white Rhinos and wow they were massive and it was funny because it appeared they were waiting by the gate were their food comes and in fact were fighting over space next to the door.
Here was the Cheeta and I must say I had to take this picture at a distance...the same spot where that cheeta is looking is where we walked passed and I swear it was stalking us and wanting to rip us apart...it seemed like he/she could just leap over the fence and tear us up. Gulp....let's move on :)
Towards the top we stopped at the Hippo pools....and as imagined on a warm day they were just chilling. There were at least 4 different areas/pools for them to wade around in, we even saw a pigmey Hippo! This shot taken frmo an outpost can also be used to picnic...
Then a stop over to the Kangaroos and Koalas! Cute indeed.
We finally made it to the top and got a great view of the Lions, they reside on the hillside and looks like a very natural habitat for them. They have large spaces in between lots and it was funny because they were staring over at the mountain goats in the adjacent lot.
We then decided to treat ourselves to the cable car ride down and get a great view of all the terrain we covered. It was a great ride and had a great view of the city as well!
This was by far a truly wonderful zoo and although I have not visited many others around the world, I could see why one would argue that this was in the top tier. It was a great day and next stop was a late lunch early dinner....all that walking made us hungry!
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