More Adelaide

Today we went to Adelaide Zoo with our chums from home.  The parking was free along Plane Tree Drive for the New Year's public holiday, the weather divine with the bluest of blue skies, and the crowds sparse and polite.  All unexpected bonuses which make one give a little air punch.  We queued to see Wang Wang and Funi, the only giant pandas in the Southern Hemisphere, and sauntered about the zoo gardens alternately viewing reptiles and mammals from the ananconda to the hippopotamus, and all kinds of species in between.   Most of the critters were in their enclosures which was a pleasing change.  I spent far less time than I usually do searching in vain for furry bodies or little faces camouflaged in their artificial surrounds or absent entirely. The noisy gibbons put on a great show - with screeches louder than a whooping security alarm - and thrilling for the children.  The mandrills pointed their alarming, bare, pink bottoms in our direction.  The seals and penguins swam about to cool off from the afternoon heat. The playful meerkats eyed us in a friendly, expectant fashion like puppies.  Little Wanna captured their perky faces up close in 50 photos taken on her sister's camera (a clean out of the memory card is in order I feel).  It was, all in all, an immensely enjoyable day topped off with a stroll across the road to the Adelaide Botanic Gardens to see the mediterranean gardens, the Amazon Waterlily garden and the vast Bicentennial Conservatory full of familiar tropical plants from my Queensland childhood.  We lolled about near a small water feature and let the children wade in their bare feet.  A perfect holiday day.  What will tomorrow bring I wonder?