Taronga Zoo

Monday June 19th – Grant got up early this morning and went for a run around Sydney. He wanted to let all his running buddies know that, yes; he did run past the Opera House and across the Sydney Harbor Bridge. Once he got back we made our way down to Circular Quay and took a ferry across the harbor to the Taronga Zoo. We only had a couple of hours as we are flying out today for Cairns so we made the most of our short time there. Taronga Zoo is located right on the harbor and sits on the side of a hill. Once you leave the dock you take a “Sky Safari” gondola to the top of the hill and work your way down. Today was the Zoos first day of offering photos with the Koalas and they had discounted the service to only $3. So of course we got our photos taken. We got to go into the enclosure and stand right next to the koala for the photo. Grant was really excited by this as it was his first experience getting near a koala. Unfortunately I was a bit more jaded as I have been places where they actually let you pet the animals. However, one of the koalas had a baby whose head was sticking out of its momma’s pouch. Its little face was all stretched and I got a good close up of him/her which was cool. We saw all the Australian animals as well as the snow leopards, gorillas, and orangutans before we had to head back across the water to the hotel. We caught a shuttle to the airport and hung around for awhile as our flight was delayed.
We got to Cairns at about 7:30 pm and headed to our hostel. Sue had stayed at the same one the night before and warned me (too late) that it wasn’t as nice as the ones we had been staying in during our New Zealand travel. She was right, it was noisy and not our scene but would do for a night. Tomorrow we will search for something that doesn’t resemble Spring Break.