San Diego Zoo
Today was the day to visit the world famous San Diego Zoo. It's quite the place, but not awesome (yet). I was very impressed by a fair bit of it. There's clearly been many decades of planting of trees and plants. In more recent times there has been a concerted effort to upgrade the exhibits to modern, animal friendly standards. The new work is really well done. They're still working on upgrading the rest. In the mean time, the larger animals are rotated with the ones out at the Wild Animal Park out of the city. That is an open plains zoo like the Western Plains Zoo in Victoria, but apparently on a bigger scale with many more animals. We didn't get time to get out to that one. So at least the big cats and other animals don't spend too much time in the old style cramped little cages that always distress me (& no doubt the animals). I give a lot of credit to the San Diego Zoo for the work they do in conjunction with other zoos around the world in preservation of endangered and non-endangered animal species. (I know! Bloody tree hugger. Whatever!) As an aside, most of the planted vegetation at the zoo and much of San Diego is actually made up of Australian native plants! Apparently our plants are the only ones that can survive in the arid climate of San Diego. Who would have thought?
Balboa Park
Around midday we'd "done" the zoo and headed into the neighboring Balboa Park. (The zoo is actually part of Balboa park). Balboa Park is a beautiful place with many museum and arts buildings along with a number of really nice theme gardens and parks. We were pleasantly surprised when we started looking around. I can't really say much about it and the best way to appreciate and understand what it's about it to go there. Below are some photos of this lovely and vast park.
Back at Pacific Beach we enjoyed another spectacular sunset.
