chocolat

You start with farms that grow cacao trees.

Safari!

The San Diego Zoo's Safari Park (renamed from the Wild Animal Park, as it was very emphatically known last time I visited... when I was about 12) is less zoo-like than the actual Zoo (though there is a small zoo there), and has more emphasis on the wide-open spaces of the majority of the park.  They have options to rent Segways or get driven around in a small cart, or in a truck, but my friends and I chose to do the standard tram tour.  A lot of the animals are kind of far away, so I didn't take as many photos as I  might have - I only had a point-and-shoot and not very good zoom capabilities. :)

Francis

I went to the San Diego Safari Park last week (will post that... later...), then went to a professional conference. One of the lectures I attended was about training and medical/husbandry behaviors at the Zoo.

Imagine that you need to examine the mouth of a tiger.  Or do an ultrasound on a panda.  Or trim the toenails of an elephant.  Or apply moisturizing cream to the feet of a bear.  Or acquire a blood sample from a cheetah.  If one of those critters doesn't want to let you do those things, you will have to chase it around with a dart gun (from the other side of a fence, no less), which is stressful for everyone, and anesthesia can be incredibly risky in some of these animals, and if it does for a minor procedures... well, that's a problem.

Zoo!

I just got back from the San Diego Zoo.  I ran out of space on my camera's SD card (2GB) and had to sit down for a while to delete the obviously blurry pictures.  I went yesterday with S-, at whose apartment I am staying, and went back today.  After all, it's only a 5-10 minute walk away!