Cairns Tropical Zoo

On Thursday, we all headed to Cairns in our own ways. David and I flew from Sydney on a different flight from Adam and Brandon, who were also leaving from Sydney. Sophia and Eddie flew directly to Cairns through Melbourne, while Elaine and Jim connected through Sydney (but were still on a different flight from any of us coming out of Sydney). Amazingly we all landed in the same airport about 1 hour apart from each other.

After we checked in, we tried to go to the Cairns Tropical Zoo as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, due to bad taxi service, it took us about an hour to even get transportation. Luckily for us, we still had time at the zoo to see plenty of the shows and tour the whole zoo.

As soon as we entered, there was a bird waiting for Eddie to play with him.


We headed over to the wombat exhibit to hear a talk about koalas. After learning about the koalas and wombats, the lady brought the koala around so we could pet him.




BUT we didn't go to the zoo to just pet the koala, we went to the zoo to CUDDLE one! Besides the standard photo that they gave us, they allowed us to take our own photos as well. Here's a group shot. Lucky Sophia got to be the one holding her.


In the koala exhibit, there was mommy with her joey.


We also got to hang out with a sleeping wombat. Sophia and Eddie practiced their chilling skills with him.


Then, I got to wrestle with a saltwater crocodile. The zoo people made sure that I held onto him tight so he wouldn't get away. I felt like I was going to hurt him.


Like almost all the zoos in Australia, there was a petting/feeding area for the kangaroos. Unlike the one in Tasmania, these kangaroos weren't scared of anything. They let Jim chill out with them.


I was able to feed one out of my hand.


Our final show of the day was the free flight bird show. They had all these trained birds swooping around the top of our heads. There was this really pretty pink cockatoo.


This white cockatoo was super trained. He could respond to simple commands as well as jump around on a rock pretending to be a kangaroo.


As the zoo person was discussing about the barn owl, he appeared out of his hole in the tree. It was like magic. Later, we discovered there was a small box holding the owl and at the right time, the box was opened so the owl would appear.


The final exhibit of the show was an eagle! It almost took the head off of a little kid, but it was pretty amazing to see it up close.


Even though all the girls were the only ones who paid to cuddle a koala, we made sure to get a photo of Eddie with his koala. =)


After the zoo closed, we went into Cairns center and walked around. After dinner, we headed back to our accommodations to get some rest before waking up early to go DIVING!