The day after Stephanie left, we had more visitors.
This time it was two of Alberto's nieces, Dulce and Kristiel. They were in Tustin visiting other family members, and wanted to spend a few days with us.
I put those girls to work too! We spent Thursday working in the garden again - now that all the flowers were in the ground it was time to move the bulbs from the front flower bed to the perimeter of the hill.
With a little bit of elbow grease, we three girls got all the bulbs in the ground in a few hours!
The next day, I rewarded them by taking them to the San Diego Zoo. Thanks to the tix we had bought for Steph's visit but didn't use, I had some tickets that needed to be used.
We had a great time! I'll be honest, I had gone to the Zoo once before and didn't really know what all the hoopla was about. Sure, it was big, sure it was lush, but for the most part I didn't see much difference in the habitats or cages than at any other zoo, and none of the animals were out either.
This time was completely different. Our tickets included a 45 minute bus tour all around the zoo, and passage on the Skyfari tram from one end of the zoo to the other. These proved to make all the difference.
We took the bus tour the moment we walked through the gates. This gave us an opportunity to give the whole zoo a once-over and decide what we wanted to see on our own.
But there was an added bonus - because it was so early in the day, many of the animals that would later go in to avoid the summer sun were out and about! We saw so many cool animals that we didn't see again when we went around on foot. A beautiful tiger and polar bears playing were the highlights.
Once we were done with the bus tour we went to the children's petting zoo so Kristiel could touch the animals.
She was kind of scared, but pressed on with a brave face and tried to pet each one that I pointed out. They had little goats and some sheep in the petting zoo, and they were everywere!
One interesting thing I learned - an elephant's trunk has 40 muscles. We were fascinated as we watched the elephant who was trying to find things to eat on the curb - the very tips of his trunk were delicately and accurately picking up little pebbles like fingers! Very cool.
Of course, we waited in line to see the pandas, and got to see little Mei-Sheng napping on a log and big brother Bai Yun (I think that's his name) munching on some bamboo. We had to be sure to use our 'quiet voices' to not disturb them!
We took the Skyfari tram to the back of the zoo and watched all the activity below, including the gorillas playing a game chase around their habitat.
The highlight of our day was when Dulce and Kristiel fed the giraffes. They have two feeding times daily, and you can $5 per person for 3 biscuits to feed to them. These giraffes know when it is feeding time too. They start making their way to the appropriate corner of their habitat 30 minutes before feeding time even begins!
When the girls got their biscuits, we were advised to not give the biscuit right away - to hang on to it for a few seconds so we could see how the giraffes wrap their tongues around the food and tug on it.The girls did their best to follow instructions, but it is a little intimidating to see a gigantic beast with a huge long tongue towering overhead and coming closer to get some dinner!
Here's something else we learned - the Zoo has about 12 peacocks that they just left roam around the park. We saw one just strolling down the street and heading into one of the cafes. Not long after, we saw some people headed out the door! :)We had a great time, and were pooped out by the end of the day. When we got home that night, Alberto was sweet enough to have dinner ready for us. We all went to bed early that night!
The rest of the time the girls were here we did usual stuff - went shopping and picked up Meyda (their mom) in Tijuana. They left on the same day that I started my new job.......more on that in the next post!
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