May 9, 2016

May 9  San Diego Zoo & Harbour cruise  

   

  Even walking the 12 minutes to the Old Town transit station, taking the Green Line trolley and transferring to a bus, we still arrived at the San Diego Zoo ticket office just before the 9 a.m. opening.  We rode the trolley as far as the Santa Fe station, then walked six blocks to the number 7 bus stop, across the street from the County of San Diego Jail, a nice looking building completed in 1998. The jail was built to imprison 990 inmates. The Central courthouse was on the bus stop side of the street. We spoke to a woman waiting for another bus and when I said we were from Canada, she mentioned the wild forest fires near Fort McMurray, Alberta.  They have been burning since May 2.  Over the past two days, if we mention that we are from Canada we are asked if we live near the Alberta wild fires.

  When we arrived at the San Diego Zoo, the sky had light gray clouds, the wind was about 15 km per hour and the temperature was a pleasant 15 C. We purchased the day pass so that we could take the 30 minutes double decker open bus around the zoo and take the aerial tram and have the option of hopping on the “Kangaroo” shuttle bus which had about 15 stops around the zoo. We still managed to walk four km by the time that we left the Zoo.

  The San Diego Zoo is celebrating its 100th anniversary.  It is built on a hill with lots of ravines and has many kinds of trees and bushes, some plants are used to feed the animals, like bamboo for the Pandas. We waited for the first trip of the double decker open bus by one of the aviaries. The colourful birds included several kinds of tanagers, two bright orange “Andean Cock- of- the–rock” birds, and other birds. On the bus ride, we saw a polar bear enclosure where you can view the polar bears as they swim underwater.  One of the polar bears put on a show by swimming on his back then stopping, standing up, shaking off the water, and repeated the routine several times while the double decker bus halted for a minute at the enclosure.  From the bus we saw flamingos, which were a brilliant orange pink colour; orangutans, gorillas and monkeys; a hippopotamus wallowing in a pond; rhinoceros; giraffes, elephants; leopards; lions; several aviaries; camels; snakes; donkeys; zebras; sleeping koala bears and many other animals. Then we walked along some pathways, we saw gazelles and kudus; condors; an awake koala bear in a tree and more. At the Panda Bear enclosure, one Panda was sleeping, in a separate compound the panda was actively pacing over trees and through ponds waiting for a zookeeper to bring fresh bamboo.  When the bamboo was presented the panda sat down and started to chomp on the bamboo stalks.  We took the aerial tram from the northeast end by the polar bears to the southwest end close to the zoo gates, browsed the gift shop and left.  We walked to the museum buildings in Balboa Park past the Artists Village. The museum buildings, built for the 1915-16 Panama-California Exposition that commemorated the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914. To find out more about Balboa Park, the website http://www.balboapark.org/info/history gives an interesting history.  We had already visited this part of Balboa Park on our previous visit in February 2014. We found Daniel’s Coffee stand for coffee before walking to Park Blvd to catch the bus for the 20 minute ride back to downtown San Diego.

  We walked to the Embarcadero to buy tickets for the two hour harbour cruise. The clouds of the morning had cleared, it was windy about 20 km per hour and the temperature was about 18 C.  The low mountains near Tijuana, Mexico could be seen in the distance where it appeared to be raining.  There was time to go to Anthony’s Fish Grotto to order Grilled Tuna & Cheese Melt sandwiches with coleslaw and iced tea.

  The first hour of the harbour cruise went south past Seaport Village, the tuna fleet marina, under the Coronado Bridge and passed the naval base. The mountains of Mexico could be seen in the distance. The Coronado Bridge is longer than San Fransisco’s Golden Gate Bridge and it built differently.  It curves and is 2.1 miles long. We saw the naval dry docks and navy ships ready to deploy. There was a hospital ship which has 1,000 beds and 12 operating rooms.  If it was land based, it would be the 7th largest hospital in the United States. Only the aircraft carriers are too tall to pass under the Coronado Bridge and are docked in a separate area.

   The second hour of the harbour cruise went to the north basin past the Maritime Museum and a marina.  At the far north end, we saw a few seals and sea lions basking in the sun on a floating dock.  Seals and sea lions are protected species and cannot be molested by people, so they cannot be moved off docks if they decide to occupy the space.  On the west side of the bay is more naval base with facilities for dozens of F18 fighters and SH6 and Sikorski helicopters, as well as the support buildings and headquarters for the Undersea Rescue Command. As we returned to the pier, the view of the San Diego skyline was visible as were the planes coming in to land. The landing planes flight path almost clips Balboa Park. When returned to land we had registered 7.5 km so far today.

  Next stop was to walk past the Tuna Fleet marina to the Seaport Village shops and cafés. As we entered the area, we were asked to take a picture of four visiting business men with the Coronado Bridge in the background.  We stopped for Ben & Jerry’s ice cream cones to eat as we wandered around Seaport Village. We even found the 1895 carousel that was transported to San Diego in 2004 from Portland, Oregon.  It is the same vintage as the late 19th century carousel in Spokane, Washington.

  It was time to catch the trolley back to Old Town.  As we waited for the trolley, we noticed that transit inspectors were on the inbound station side.  As our trolley proceeded to Old Town our Compass transit pass was checked by an inspector.  The fare payment is regulated by an honour system with random  transit inspector checks. Once back at the hotel we wrote postcards, checked emails and relaxed before walking north on Rosecrans to Liberty Station to find a restaurant. The walk was about 2 km.  We chose the Luna Grill which advertises food made fresh and healthy.  We ordered chicken kabob with basmati rice, grilled tomato and house salad or an arugula salad with couscous, crumbled goat cheese, cucumber, tomatoes and chickpeas. The combined cost of today’s lunch and dinner was less than yesterday’s Mexican lunch in La Jolla.  We walked a little longer route back to the hotel ending the day having walked 16.4 km.