We've touched 2 koalas...and a kangaroo!

Today was another very good day. After breakfast, we headed for the Taronga Zoo. This required us to take public transit, which means we almost missed it. We had to take a taxi to the wharf to catch a ferry to the Zoo. We were running a bit late and got to the wharf with barely a minute to spare and we still had to purchase tickets. Fortunately, however, we made the ferry and got to the zoo on time. 

The zoo is huge. From the dock, we walked part way up the hill to get check in with admissions and then caught an air tram to the top of the zoo. The view was ridiculously good. Not only did we get a great arial view of the zoo, we had some great views of the Sydney skyline. 

Once we got to the top of the zoo, we found our tour guide and were taken to the education center. One of the zoo's education specialist, Greg, gave us a private showing of several of the zoos animals. Several of them we saw yesterday at the Wildlife World, but today we got to get up close and personal with them. We saw a couple of lizards, snakes and gliders. Then we went out to the yard. 

In the yard, we met Cobar, the kangaroo. She was super laid back and we all got to pet her a few times. She just munched on her carrots and hung out while we pet her and took pictures. Then we met, 2, a tortoise. He just kind of sat there. At that time, we noticed we were being watched very intently by Janie, a wallaby. She is the education wallaby so she is out for people a lot, but she wasn't in the mood to come out and be social. Once she realized that we weren't going to come near her, she relaxed and took a nap. At that time Greg brought out our new best friend, Poppy. Poppy is a quokka (I recommend google images to see what she looks like) and was beyond friendly. Greg got her out and let us pet her. Once he put her down, she still wanted to hang out with us and was licking our hands and ankles. She even spent some time chewing shoelaces. We probably could have spent all day playing with her but she decided to hop away. While we were playing with Poppy, Gerg was getting Corey, our koala friend! We were able to pet him quite a bit, too. We got to pet him a lot more than Charlie, but Charlie will also hold a place in our hearts since he was the first koala we touched.  Our last animal was Pugsley, a echidna. She looks like a porcupine, but is actually related to the platypus. We got to pet her as well and watch her root around for insects to eat. 

After we finished in the education yard, we spent about 20 more minutes with Georgie, our tour guide, and then watched a bird show. It was pretty short, but we saw some pretty impressive birds. After that, we strolled around the zoo on our own for a few ours. We walked past the elephant enclosure about 16 times, which was...thrilling. We spent a significant amount of time watching the meerkats be all adorable. There were a few babies in their habitat and they were pretty funny. They would try to do all the things the adults would, but then fall over. Then we found the red pandas (they look similar to racoons, but are really red and they look like stuffed animals). One was sleeping in the tree the entire time. The other, however, was running all over the place. It was great to watch, but hard to get a picture.  After that, we saw the wombats, who were all sleeping in their little cave holes. We tried to see a platypus, but they have been displaced from their normal habitat while it is being repaired and we couldn't spot them in their current one. 

After that, we headed back to the ferry and came back over to our harbour. We stopped for dinner at where is quickly becoming our favorite dining spot, Pancake on the Rocks. Their pancakes can leave you speechless. Seriously. They are good. 

Tonight, we are all beat. We are thinking it is going to be a quiet night in because we still have some big things in store. 

Interesting fact that we learned today: The emu and the kangaroo are on Australia's crest because they can't walk backwards. On the crest, this symbolizes never backing down. 

'Til tomorrow...cheers!