A night in Joberg with some family friends before jetsetting off to America... Lovely people with a beautiful house just down the road from Joberg Zoo. i had time to kill this morning so I took a wander round the zoo. Everything is so cheap here! A bottle of Cape Town 2004 Cab Sauv last night cost about 14 rand, thats US/AU $2! Its amazing, and zoo entrance cost me $50. Luckily ABSA bank which is affiliated with Westpac had an ATM at the entrance so I was able to withdraw cash free of charge... I took out R100and it cost me AU $14.50. Awesome.
Anyway, zoo... Now normally, as wierd as this sounds, being a Zoologist and all, I don't actually like most zoos... animals are shoved behind bars and forced to behave infront of an audience, with very few places to hide when they get sick of cutesy noises that people seem to think all animals understand... (ok Ill admit I do it sometimes but still!)
Anyway i got a chance to see some animals I have never seen, like a pair of Polar bears, dripping with sweat poor things in the SA summer.
And Brown bears, my god I just wanna cuddle them!! So fluffy, and furry and big and well, bear-like!
And he usua boring african animals i've seen in the last 2 months like elephants and lions and cheetahs and African wild dogs and... kidding, they were pretty awesome too see again. Except I always hate seeing animals again in a cage after I have seen them in the Wild, it somehow ruins them.. they always look so folorn and sad, stuck behind those bars.
Some pretty cool things I also saw were a Puma or mountain lion, very cute! And the cutest little Emperor Tamarins, cute litle things that squeaked through their big white moustaches! Then there were some Madagascan Lemrs and black spider monkeys, which were helarious, with their long black legs and tails swinging around, SO human-like it was scary.
Well, I have to go friends, I have to stock up on suncream for Cayman... and its far too expensive there so i'm buying it 'en bulk' here. Flight tonight is at 8pm, through Dakar, West Africa, to re-fuel which should be fun :P and arriving in freezing cold (predicted temps: -10 to -5 deg C) New York tomorrow morning at 7.40 am, there for a day and a night then flight to Sunny Grand Cayman on sunday morning.
Will update you on New York from a snow-covered cafe on Broadway, where the skyscrapers tower and the city never sleeps... screw that I'm gonna sleep for hours after this 18 hour flight!!! Very Excited though!!
Hope all's well wherever you all are, and special hi's to friends in Brisbane, missing you all lots!
Love Mel xoxoxoxo
