Speaking of their visit, I thought I'd share some of the pics we took while they were here. We took a deluxe 3.5 hour
Photo Caravan Safari at the Wild Animal Park. Here, my parents are feeding acacia leaves to
Baringo Giraffes and I'm feeding apple slices to an Indian Rhino. Actually, my mom's getting
slimed by giraffes.
After the caravan ride, we went up to where I work and I was able to bring out
Akisa, our Madagascar Ground Boa. She's about 7.5 feet and 22 lbs. She's a sweet girl and sleeps most of the time when we have her out (she's nocturnal). At 10 years old, she is retired from a breeding program down at the zoo, where she also was an exhibit animal. Isn't she beautiful?
Another day, we visited the
Birch Aquarium (
Scripps Institute) at UCSD. Unfortunately, I got eaten by a shark. Actually, I was able to poke it in the eye and escape. In all seriousness, it's a small, but really great aquarium and we had an awesome time.
The final point of interest was the
Maritime Museum downtown. It's pretty awesome. You can look through the ships they have and/or the museum exhibits, which are placed on the ships. They have:
The Star of India, a mid-19th century barque, which is the world's oldest active sailing ship
The HMS Surprise, a replica 24-gun frigate (the ship from Master and Commander)
The Berkeley, a steam ferryboat
The Medea, a steam-driven private yacht
The Californian, a replica tall ship
B-39, a Soviet diesel electric submarine
The ships are all cool. The sailing ships are fully rigged. You can go through the boiler area on the Berkeley. However, I think my favorite was actually the submarine. You go down inside and then from the fore to the aft torpedo rooms. The thing is huge but teeny. It's like hobbits lived inside. And we had to get through four of these water-tight doors.
