The Australian Day

Our last day in Australia was spent at the Irwin family's zoo- the Australia zoo.  This may possibly have been one of my favourite parts of the trip.  But more on our favourites later this week.

We cabbed it over the 25ish minutes to the zoo (and 80$ later) - side note, transport around the Sunshine Coast is pricey if you aren't brave enough to drive yourself...but there was no way we were driving on the opposite side of the road, especially with all those roundabouts.  That's just confusing AF

We had to be at the zoo for 8:00 for our Red Panda encounter.  Thankfully I had run into a former student who raved about her experience there and that I should book an encounter ahead of time so that we had the pick we wanted.  Merci Jamille!  Lucia had wanted to do the cheetah encounter but we decided it sounded too scary and picked the Red Panda instead.   I'm glad we did.  We had 30 minutes of cuddle and feeding time with Robbie the cutest Red Panda.  It was great to ask questions and learn about this adorable animal.  By the end of the session both Willis and Lucia were convinced they want to be zoo keepers when they grow up.

The rest of the day was spent exploring this beautiful zoo which is giant and super spacious and not to forget super interactive.  There are zookeepers everywhere wandering around and there are lots of areas where the animals roam with you- like the koala, kangaroos and lemurs. 

I don't know if I can pinpoint a favourite part but we did sit in the giant stadium to learn about the wildlife warriors where they had tons of different bird species flying around as they taught about them.  Also snakes. Yuck.  Then there was the crocodile presentation which was pretty freaking cool.

Anyway- it was an awesome day and I would highly recommend this zoo to anyone visiting down under.  Especially if you like being up close with animals.  Now Willis and the bird exhibit? That was something else.

Tonight we're at a hotel at the airport as we start our journey back home (and back in time) tomorrow morning.  We are excited to get back to our norm and to snow?  And baseball? Gonna be fun!

Thanks for following along my live update journaling as we travelled.  We'll be back to the regularly scheduled hogwash tomorrow- which is fun because I'm showing my fave Australian "souvenir"