A great Day trip to the Wellington Zoo

So Friday morning we got up and hauled our butts to crossfit as we had a big day and had to leave early anyway.  After crossfit we showered, ate and high tailed it to the three hour drive to Wellington.  We had a date with red pandas at the Wellington Zoo!  We were a little worried at the beginning of the drive as we had to be there by 11AM, and we got stuck behind a convoy hauling a huge steel beam.  There were 4 escort cars, one truck pulling and one truck pushing.  Watching them go through roundabouts was something else.  Since it was so large we ended up having to follow it for a LONG time (remember there are mostly 2 lane roads here, even the "highways" are like that).  We ended up being on time but it made the drive a tidbit more stressful than necessary.

The Wellington Zoo itself is not that large.  Its animals have huge enclosures though so that is nice.  Cec and I had scheduled the red panda encounter and it was everything I had hoped for and more!  We were taken in by a Ranger and told the basics.  We will sit on benches and the red pandas will crawl onto our laps and eat the pears and grapes out of our hands.  We WERE allowed to pat the heads, ears and backs but not to hug them.  Which, by the way, was SO much more than I expected!!!  We got to meet three pandas in total all from old to pretty young.  They all were so excited to see us, but when they were done eating then left and laid down for naps ASAP.  AWESOME experience. Here are two links to YouTube showing a few seconds of us actually feeding them because it's awesome!: here and here

(We are pretty excited to be here.  And not be rained on.  It literally rained the 4 days previous and the next 2)

(Here are our VIP backstage passes!)

(One of my new favorite pics of us.  As you can see, they literally crawl all over you.  Here are the yourtube links again: here and here)

(Here you can see some of the benches. Note the red panda is ready to eat!  We had to make sure not to sit on them!)

(They had nails that pushed into your legs, not painfully, but you knew they were there)

(They loved the treats so much they would lick your hands for the juice!)

(My new profile pic on facebook?)

(Cec's facebook pic?)

Now we also saw a few other animals there, although the panda encounter was by far the highlight of the tour!  

(One of the funniest things were all the "zookeeper says" warning signs posted around...)

(Like the "don't sit on the fence or you may die" in nice words lol)

(The characal exhibit was awesome and the kitties were really active)

(Ironically, we got a great photo of a wild tui as well!)