Wildlife Park

Later Wednesday I hit San Diego, where I spent a couple of days with my old friend Albie and her hubby Court. They also had a house guest, the artist Nigel Sade (who has a pirate complex). We spent most of Thursday at the wonderful San Diego Wild Animal Park, where they have all sorts of animals on a huge area of land. We're talking lions, tigers, elephants, giraffes, rhinos, cheetas, gorillas, etc. I also highly recommend the 4D dinosaur ride that strictly speaking has nothing to do with wildlife, but is damn good fun anyway.

I'll let the pics do the talking from here, but because of the sheer number I am putting the lions in a separate post later.

Three cheetah sisters resting in the shade.


Rhinos. Short tempered and poor of eyesight they're liable to charge anything that moves. They'll sink like a stone if they try to swim, so they stay in shallow water.


Ostrich & eggs


It's rare to see adult giraffes lying down - they usually don't do this for more than max an hour per day. They also had several cute baby giraffes.


There are few sights more comical than a giraffe trying to drink water.


Gorillas - some pondering life, others just rolling around in the shade.


In the animal nursery they had these three cheetah babies in a playroom. Cuteness defined.


A fourth baby was given the special treatment, bottle feeding and all. Wewy, wewy cute.


Baby elephants are cute too...


The park is infested with bunnies - they get through the fences and eat animal food at the cost of $10,000 per month. This little guy followed us around for a while, probably to see if we had any food.


You can almost SEE he's thinking about kicking the giraffe's butt.


A tree full of vultures.


The beautiful artificial waterfall, here rendered in arty-farty b&w.


The strangest animals of them all - Albie and Nigel the pirate/artist.