20 May 2023
Rainy safari
Taipei Zoo 2.0
My plan today was to go and walk along a river, through a tunnel, across some rope bridges, and look at a cave and some waterfalls. So when I walked outside and there was a river running down the road, I had to go and sip a coffee and ponder how I felt about drowning in a canyon.
After loading the weather radar, it looked as though most of the storms were in the northern part of the city, so I looked south, and saw the zoo. I had been to the zoo before on 1 April 2011 (I just checked), and I remember it as being the best zoo I have ever been to. Would that still be the case 12 years later?
Only the pics below will have the answer to that.
After fighting a few monkeys, I headed back to the city centre, which was still a bit rainy, and after searching for a suitable food option I settled on being the only male in a vegan restaurant, where I made everyone uncomfortable.
I climbed onto the roof of the MRT station to take this photo of rain.
After heading all the way south on the brown line, hooray, less rain.
I was at the zoo right on opening time. Probably a good idea as it is Saturday today.
As with all zoos, a lot of it has no animals, but it is probably the nicest garden setting anywhere in Taipei. Also here is a cave. One I wont drown in today.
I see these monkeys on most of my hikes. Now I see them in a zoo.
OMG, a panda. At this stage I should mention the zoo entry fee is about $2.50. There is no extra fee to see the pandas. I just saved about $50 compared to seeing them in Adelaide.
Here is the other panda. They need to be separated. They are truly the worlds most useless creatures.
The zoo is on the side of a mountain. I am going to head back to the area tomorrow for a hike, the final hike. All the enclosures are large and green. It would be better if they put creatures in a small cage so you can actually see them.
There are at least 8 kinds of turtles, ranging in flavours from delicious, to super delicious.
This is an indoor area, there are tiny monkeys that run along the hand rails, very hard to photograph though!
A nice example of the lush surroundings, including orchids.
Baby giraffe.
A very rare 2 humper! Australia only has thousands of the boring single humps. The hump part is delicious, Jackie Chan made a movie based on this.
Earlier I was at what I thought was the elephant enclosure, but there were no elephants. It seems they have 3 different areas they herd them between. I think they have a lot of space they can charge about in if they want to.
The dragon enclosure had a lot of dragons, but since I saw one the other day on a guys shoulder in the street, I was underwhelmed.
Apparently a bear or 2 lives in here. I could not find the bear. Maybe the bear is hibernating.
I nearly skipped the bird world part of the show, but it is large and very good, the birds roam free as you wander past.
A different flock of flamingos.
There were signs warning to not get to close to this type of bird. Still a girl stood next to it and held out her hand. Followed by screaming. Actually a few kids were chased around in here by large birds which was amusing.
You can really get close to a lot of different birds.
Final zoo pic, I culled heaps. Stripey horses. They also have space to run about.
So after declining to eat zoo meat in the zoo cafeteria due to the price, I headed back to town and ate overpriced vegan food instead. I was a bit lost because I did not get a buzzer when I ordered and my food did not come on a tray. Of course, it has stopped raining now.