Last look at the condo

Here's the infamous hot tub that we spent so many hours soaking in and calling people in the snowbound east.

A last look at the view from our balcony.

A fishing boat goes out the channel for the day's work.

Last Sunset at Mission Beach

Well, the last one we'll see this year, anyway.

Moon over Mission Point

As we watched the sunset, I looked back and saw that the moon had risen over Mission Point. You can't see our condo in this shot, but it's just in front of and to the left of that white building that you can see. The road and the jetty that run right past our condo.

Fred, sunset at Mission Beach

Fred watches our last sunset at Mission Beach for this year. It was a beauty!

Wild Animal Park

These Okapi are the only animal related to the giraffe. They have long blue tongues, like giraffes.

Pink flamingos. The Land Rover is part of the exhibit.

Abyssinian Ground-Hornbills. (Thanks to Larry from Missouri for this info.) They looked prehistoric.

One of our favorites, the gorilla exhibit. Signs warn you not to make eye contact.

Wild Animal Park

On or trip to the Wild Animal Park, we saw these white rhinos.

The giraffes were far away, but we could see that one was a baby!

Black rhino.

Marabou Stork. (Thanks to Larry from Missouri for that information!) Love that curly hair! Lots of fly-in birds were hanging around these birds, as they had just been fed cow spleens. Great blue heron, snowy egrets, a great egret and a black-crowned night heron were all hanging around.

San Diego Sunset

The view from our rented condo at sunset. Aaahhhh.

Flamingo Parade

While Fred and I were on the Pelagic Bird Trip (see earlier posts), I met Mary who works with the birds at SeaWorld. She told us, if we came to SeaWorld, not to miss the Flamingo Parade every day at 10:30. We managed to find them (it wasn't really difficult--we looked for flamingos in the middle of the sidewalk and a crowd of people taking photographs.)

These are young flamingos who have been hand-raised. I think they are about six months old at this point and just beginning to get their color, which comes from their diet. In the picture above, you can see a bit of the salmon color under the wing, which Mary said is the first place it appears. Below, Mary is bonding with a flamingo.

This handler was one of the two who hand-raised the flamingos and this one in particular was very bonded to him. It kept approaching him and nudging him with its head. He would mimic the flamingo behavior to include making croaking calls. The flamingos have a strong flock instinct, and when he would leave, they would all follow.

Sea World Dolphin Show

We decided to sit way up at the Dolphin show. There were seats in the "spash zone" which we declined to take. The second picture shows why. The dolphins and pilot whales started the show by swimming around the enclosure purposely splashing water over the edge.

One can't really get a true perspective on how high this dolphin was jumping. It was incredible!

This dolphin was propelling itself around the pool "standing up!"

Dolphin Show

I believe this was an audience participant? At least it was supposed to be. Glad it wasn't me.

At the end of the show, each of the handlers did a stunt with their charge.

Pilot Whale

As part of the Dolphin Show, this pilot whale did various tricks, including this pose on a shelf.

Penguin

The main penguin exhibit was closed but we could look at these Magellanic penguins outside. There were about a dozen of them swimming very actively, popping up out of the water then diving again.

Polar Bears

You know I would have pictures of the polar bears, didn't you? This was the best polar bear exhibit I'd seen. We could watch them from above the water and below. There were two bears, and they were very active. They spent a lot of time playing with floating objects in the water. It was hysterical to see one of them trying to climb on the little plastic iceburg in the middle picture. Of course, it sank and he fell off!