December 15

This morning we met Kyle & Deb at Circular Quay (pronounced "key") for a ferry ride to the Toronga Zoo. The zoo is in Sydney, but across the harbor from the Opera House and the area where we are staying. The ride is only about 12 minutes on what Jeff calls a "2-headed Ferry." These ferries have a bow on each end so they don't have to turn around. Once we were on land again, we boarded the zoo sky tram that took us to the other side of the zoo where the entrance is. Trevor's mother was wonderful and loaned us her annual zoo pass, so the 4 of us got into the zoo for free!

The Toronga Zoo is large, with wonderfully large exhibits. We enjoyed the several walk through exbihibits, especially being only a few feet away from kangaroos. We have been surprised at how lazy kangaroos look, they always seem to be laying down :). Cheryl loved the koalas of course, but also fell in love with the wombats. They look like little black bears. The only ones we found were in a special exhibit for nocturnal animals, so we saw them sleeping in their "burrows" (a couple were asleep on their backs with their feet sprawled out). Very cute!!!

We enjoyed hearing keepers give talks at the elephant, giraffe, dingo and koala exhibits. We also went to the afternoon seal show, in which they only had sea lions performing (Cheryl thought that was especially funny!). It was nice to learn more about the animals from the keepers. Probably the most amazing animal was the komono dragon. It was massive!! It was probably 4 meters in length and didn't look particularly happy.

The day ended for Cheryl with the trip back to the hotel. She had had a headache all day (but still managed to enjoy the zoo) and had been hot (not as much wind/breeze today as in past days). Once on the ferry ride back to the Quay she became nauseous. She was OK until we were in a taxi (the 4 of us traveling to our hotel) stuck in horrible traffic. Once back to the hotel, Cheryl said a quick goodbye to Kyle & Deb and crawled into bed. Jeff took Kyle & Deb to their next hotel (Kyle has business meetings in Sydney for the rest of the week). On the way, Kyle had him detour to the Toyota plant for a drive-by tour. They enjoyed dinner together before Jeff said goodbye.