Sydney -- Taronga Zoo (August 7, 2008)

I woke up early this morning due to the fact that I couldn’t feel my nose I was so cold. It reminded me of when my heat was broken for a month in LA and I slept on my couch in the living room with two portable heaters keeping me warm. (These are not pleasant memories). My only respite was a hot, 20-minute shower that also managed to take the chill off the apartment, at least for a little while.

After getting cleaned up, I jumped on the Bondi Beach bus and took the 40-minute ride to Circular Quay (pronounced “key”) in Sydney Harbor. After a 15-minute ferry ride to the North end of the harbor, I disembarked at Taronga Zoo, which looks like a Thai rainforest on the edge of the ocean.

The Taronga Zoo (click the link for more photos) is filled with a wide variety of animals, including the requisite zebras, elephants and monkeys. However, the real showstoppers here are the creatures native to Australia, including Koala bears, kangaroos, dingoes, kookaburras and the elusive Tasmanian Devil. I immediately headed out to see the koalas and somehow lucked out, as these notoriously lazy animals (they are sloths, after all) were awake, eating, climbing trees and mugging for the cameras.

Next up was the reptile house, which was “guarded” by a Komodo Dragon, the largest reptile on Earth and occasional eater of humans. Inside the exhibit (and safely kept in glass houses) were some of the deadliest snakes on earth, including the Fierce snake, which doesn’t look “fierce” but has enough venom in one bite to kill 200,000 mice! (It turns out that 11 of the 15 deadliest snakes are native to Australia, and I was silently thankful that I wasn’t heading out into the “bush” anytime soon).

One of the cool things about the Taronga Zoo is that you can get up close to the animals. I got a chance to pet one of the elephants, and for a nominal fee ($20AU), you can feed the giraffes and take pictures with the koalas. In addition, the wallaby and platypus exhibit is open, meaning you inhabit the same space as they do. I didn’t see any platypuses but did come face to face with the wallabies, which are incredibly cute.

After a massive thunderstorm made its way through the area, leaving buckets of torrential rain in its midst, I made my way through the rest of the Australia section and happened upon the crocodile cage right at lunchtime. It was like feeding time in the reptile cage to the nth degree, as there was a giant bird in the mouth of the crocodile with blood dripping down on the floor. There was just one word for the experience – AWESOME!

I also came across a kookaburra, which ironically has a call that sounds exactly like a monkey, and the dingoes (“The dingo ate my baby!”). Last up was the Tasmanian Devil, another usually-nocturnal creature that happened to be running around, presumably just for me. The devil actually looks like a large, black-and-white hamster with red ears, and is kind of cute, that is until it goes crazy, bears its sharp and large white teeth, and starts screaming at you.

The zoo closed at 5:00 p.m., so I took the ferry back to the CBD and met up with Cara on the 36th floor of the Shangri-La hotel for a drink while watching the sun set over the Sydney Harbor Bridge. We then made our way to Surry Hills for drinks and dinner at the hip and happening Longrain, where I had a delicious (and, of course, expensive) Whiskey Sour and a grass-fed Thai Beef salad, which apparently is a very popular dish in Australia. My dinner impresses me once again and I realize that the Aussies really know how to eat well!