San Diego Animal Parks (7/14/03 - 7/15/03)

• Very few people, at least on a Monday. The Zoo on a Tuesday was packed, and due to the nature of the place, it's always chock full of kids. Not all kids behave. Not all parents look after their children. WAP provides a much nicer experience, especially if you go on (reasonably easy) walking trails around the park where you barely meet any other people but get to observe a lot of animals.

• "Wilder" atmosphere. The Zoo, although it's well maintained and prefers to use the word "exhibits" instead of "cages", is still a zoo: animals are confined to small territory, constantly disturbed by unceremonious visitors, and look quite unhappy with their fate in life. At WAP, on the other hand, you get to see animals in their natural habitat or at least something like it: antelopes walking across spacious plains, lions resting in the shade by the hillside (not in a tiny doghouse). Of course areas are still much more crowded with the animals than in nature, and Asian species graze right next to African ones, but that's why you, the visitor, actually get to see the beasts - in "real" nature they'd be sparse and hard to find. WAP is probably about as close as you can get to seeing animals in the wild without going to Africa for a safari...

• Fun and informative tour. The tram tour at WAP is very well conducted; the tram comes close to animal-inhabited areas and allows a view that isn't accessible by walking trails, plus the narration is interesting and enlightening even for someone like me (as a child I read every book on animals I could get my hands on). The tour focuses a lot on reproductive behavior of animals, probably due to the park's impressive success with breeding of various endangered species and understandable pride in this achievement. We got to hear about sex life of deer (females pick males with most developed horns and bright skin coloring), giraffes (they give birth standing up so the baby drops 8 feet to the ground), rhinos (when a female chooses a potential mate, she breaks into a gallop and runs for several days non-stop, with the male following her; if at the end of the race the guy is still around, the female will consider procreating with him)... lots of fun adult content. In contrast, the tour at the Zoo had one and only highlight: double-decker bus. An hour-long wait culminated in a half-hour ride around the park on the same roads that you can walk, with commentary like "Here in this exhibit we have an elephant... oh, you can't see it? Raise your hands who can't see the elephant! That's okay, I can't see it either, it's probably away hiding". You'll be better served by walking around on your own.

Pictures