A funfilled Saturday

Yesterday Alberto decided at the last minute to not go to work, giving us a free Saturday together.

With me flying back to Texas tonight, we decided to make the most out of the day and do some fun stuff!








Wild Animal Park

After 5+ years of living here, I finally got to go to the Wild Animal Park! We didn't see all of it, but I didn't really want to anyway...we are planning on coming back with Jonathan and his family. Instead of rushing to see it all, we picked a circuitous route around the south end of the park so we could see the lions.

We had a great time! We saw a 'hot air balloon', which gives people a 10 minute or so ride up in the air to take in the landscape:
























We saw an Eland along the way, and then we got to see the lions.

They were lazing in the afternoon sun, completely ignoring us. The only time they picked up their heads was to listen to a plane as it passed overhead.





Then we went to go see the Elephant show.

We learned that there are 5 Asian Elephants and 11 African elephants at the Wild Animal Park.


We also learned that elephants have over 100,000 muscles in their trunks. The elephants demonstrated this by catching sticks, one after the other, as they were being tossed up by the handler. One elephant had 5 sticks in her trunk by the time they were done!



The elephants were really beautiful and gentle.


The handlers showed us how they have to be trained to do lots of things so that the handlers can take care of them, like trust to raise their feet up behind them so that handlers can check for abcesses and also to crouch down so that the handlers can get a better look at them during health checkups.





After the elephants, we made our way back to the front, where we saw lots of birds hanging out in the waterways that run through the park, and then stopped to see some cute meerkats.



I love those little guys!But they moved so fast that I couldn't get a very clear shot of them!Instead, they came out looking like the Tazmanian Devil! :D














All in all, we had a great time, but that was only half of our fun day!

Poker Night


That night, we had dinner and poker night for a small group of our friends.

I invited Tan and a friend and Alberto invited Angel and his girlfriend Dawn.


I always get nervous when you mix groups and I wasn't sure if it all turn out well. But we had a great time and everyone enjoyed playing poker and drinking until almost 2 am!








At the end of the night, Jerry won the most money, and Dawn and Angel ended up on the losing end.



We had a lot of fun teaching Dawn how to play and I (who lost all my money in record time!) ended up being the designated dealer most of the night.



I hope we get to hang with this group again soon.