Canada - part ten

Friday 7th August 2009

8.25am
I had another strange dream last night, my car had been stolen from outside the Huyton Suite but strangely enough I was quite calm about it :-S I reported it to the police and realised there would be cctv in a public place like that so I asked for that. When we watched the cctv we found the thief was Nana Mouskouri :-S :-S I then went home and found that my car was back outside my house :-S That’s about the sum total of the dream – very strange :-S

When I went for my swim this morning I decided to time how long it takes me to do the diagonal in this pool. At first I timed it across 10 diagonals and it was an average of 17 seconds but when I timed a single fast(ish) diagonal it was about 14 seconds.

Yesterday we’d arranged that Doug and Connie would pick us up at 10am so that was what we were aiming for when getting ready – at 9.50 Doug rang to say they were downstairs :-o The last few bits we needed to do were done rather more hurriedly than we intended! It wasn’t too bad though and we got down in just a few minutes.

When we got to the African Lion Safari it was really busy as we were going in – about 6 lanes of cars going in and it still took ages. There were people wandering through the lanes selling souvenir programmes so there was a bit of a squabble about who was going to pay for it and I was so quick I’d given the lady my money while everyone was fighting LOL

We’d already decided we were going on the tour bus through the park so when we got in we were going to buy the tickets – until we saw the queue – it was miles outside the door of the shop!!!!! We decided to go for a wander first and we’d buy the tickets later – hopefully when the queue was shorter.

We started off wandering round the various different bird cages and taking photos – there were LOADS!!! In some of the cages of the bigger birds there had been small squares cut into the wire fences so that you could get pictures of the birds without seeing the bars of the cages. There were also peacocks just wandering freely round the park, including a family with 5 or 6 babies :-D At one point I got really close to them and actually touched one of the babies :-)

At one point in the park there’s a small waterfall so Doug took a photo of mum and I sitting in front of it. Just past the waterfall there’s a little mist thing which is really nice to walk through – would be even better on a hot day, yesterday was just comfortable – not too hot and not too cold. When we’d got onto the other side of the mist we saw a sign and a stall advertising elephant rides but there was no sign of any actual rides going on. There were 3 staff members leading ponies through the park so we asked one of them and they said the elephant rides would be starting at 1pm :-) I decided I REALLY wanted an elephant ride – when else would I have the opportunity!!

After that there wasn’t much further to go in the walking bit of the park so we headed back in the direction we came. We found a few more cages with birds in and we also saw where the petting zoo was. Doug said he’d go and see if the queue for the bus tickets had gone down at all and if it was reasonable he’d get the tickets for us. The queue must’ve gone down a lot cos he wasn’t very long at all :-)

Doug was back by the time we got to the petting section, there were machines with feed you could buy. You could go in with the goats and there were also deer and llamas you could feed but not go into the enclosure with. Of course I had to go into the goats pen and it was so funny. I had a handful of feed and had about 6 goats round me and they were getting so impatient they were trying to eat me!!! I had cropped trousers with strings on and I had to tuck the strings inside the trousers to stop the goats eating them and then they started on my pockets instead hahahahaha I also fed the deer and llamas but they weren’t quite as much fun LOL

After that we headed back towards the start of the park with the intention of going back to the car for lunch. On the way we spotted the queue for the train ride and it didn’t seem too long so we decided to go on the train before lunch. Just as we got to the queue the next train had come in so people were moving down – we didn’t make it on that one but it was clear we would get on the next train :-) While we were standing in the queue the structure we were in had slats on the top with big gaps in between. At one point somebody looked up and realised there was a peacock sitting on the slats above us :-o Obviously nobody wanted to be directly underneath a bird so there was a general shuffling in the queue LOL

When we got on the train we discovered the seats were really small and low ;-D Obviously they’re really aimed at children.

9pm
we’ve been back about an hour so I’ll continue with yesterday before starting to recount today’s tales!

On the train ride they said it was a scenic ride rather than an animal watching ride, we still managed to see a few deer, turtles and geese. It was only a short ride and but it was very nice.

We then found a picnic bench to have our lunch, Connie and Mum sat while Doug and I went to get the lunch from the car. We sat for about half an hour – 45 minutes for lunch then on the way back to dump the stuff back in the car we went to the shop so that if we bought anything that could go back in the car too. I just bought 2 magnets, Connie bought a necklace and some chocolate sunflower seeds, and mum bought a t-shirt.

Once we’d put the stuff back in the car it was just about the right time to go and wait for the tour bus. When we got on the bus we wanted seats all together, someone suggested seats behind each other but I said 2 sets of seats across the bus so that we could get pictures from both sides of the bus.

On the tour we started off going through the lion reserve, they were mostly asleep but at least they were out in the open so we could see them – there was a baby but it was on the top of a stone structure and facing away from us. We also went through a few other reserves including the ostriches. The bus driver / guide told us that all the ostriches were female and most of them were standing or walking around. One was sitting on her legs in the middle of the bunch and she seemed to be saying “look at me aren’t I great”, after we commented on this I suddenly said “it’s Liz” and we all agreed and laughed. Doug had said we’d probably see ‘liz’ in there somewhere but he originally suggested she’d be in with the monkeys – my discovery was much better :-D :-D

When we got into the baboon enclosure there were some very brave people who had taken their own vehicles through :-o They were really good to watch. One guy had a pickup truck with an open back and at one point he had about 7 or 8 monkeys in the back of his truck :-D There were quite a few babies in there too playing around and they were gorgeous. Two monkeys actually jumped on top of our bus. Unfortunately right in the middle of the monkeys the batteries died on the camera so I was busy scrabbling about trying to find the others which I had deliberately put in my bag. Luckily I found the batteries quick enough that I didn’t really miss any of the action LOL

At the end of the baboon enclosure there was one of the park rangers who had to check our bus to make sure there were no monkeys trying to hitch a lift out of their enclosure on our bus LOL

After the baboons we went through an enclosure that had rhinos and giraffes in it, at one point the rhinos charged across the road and then had to be herded back to their correct place by a ranger in a truck.

Once we got off the bus we headed towards the elephant rides but it was beginning to rain and we got a bit concerned that it would absolutely lash down – thankfully it didn’t!! There was quite a queue for the elephant rides but I was determined to do it – when else would I get a chance to do that!!!! When I got to the front of the queue I said I wasn’t with anyone else and I was hoping to get on an elephant on my own (but I didn’t actually tell them that). When it was my turn I got on the front and the girl put 2 children on behind me, I was a bit disappointed but figured I could live with it. Luckily for me the man who was with the children did say he was hoping that it would be just him and the boys so they took the children off :-) As you’re going round the person leading the elephant will stop them to allow anyone on the ground to take photos and I was lucky – I got on the elephant who liked to pose when she was stopped – she’d lift up her trunk and slightly lift one of her feet LOL Doug got some really good photos of / for me :-D

Time was racing on by this point so we decided it was time to head for home, especially as we were going out for tea in the evening with AB to the Mandarin which is a really good Chinese buffet restaurant we went to last time we were here.

When we got back to the apartment Connie and Doug popped upstairs to take the dogs out before we went out to the Mandarin.

The restaurant was pretty busy when we got there so we had to wait about 20 minutes before we got a table. There was also another lady sitting on the bench and she’d just collected a take-out order and as usual AB got talking to her LOL It turned out she was also there on holiday from England although she was originally from Manchester but now living in London, she was staying with family as well.

We all ate far too much but I also love going to the Mandarin cos you can taste lots of different things without worrying you’ve wasted your money. Most of the savoury stuff I liked apart from a chicken thing which I can’t remember what it was LOL I tried quite a few of the desserts, some of which I didn’t like. Doug had got ice cream and he brought it back in quite a big bowl, when I went for ice cream all I could see was tiny bowls. When I got back to the table I asked him where he’d got his bowl and he said it was a soup bowl hahaha – I never even saw the soup to get a bowl from there!

At the end of the night we asked one of the ladies who was serving us if she’d take our picture and she had to stand pretty far back to get us all in. We all got fortune cookies at the end of the night and Doug nearly killed himself laughing at Connie’s – “You are an attractive and interesting subject” hahahaha

We just went back to the apartment after that and we more or less went straight to bed cos it was fairly late – about 9.30pm I think.