Last Day in Guangzhou

Today we wore everyone out at the Chime-Long Safari Park. First we took a thoroughly uneventful subway ride with one transfer. The Guangzhou subways are amazing: air conditioned, not stuffy, bright, and reasonably fast. All of the maps are logical and the announcements for the stops are made in Mandarin, Cantonese, and English. The only trouble we had was figuring out their token system for a couple of minutes. It took about an hour each way, but the people were really nice and gave seats to whichever parent had a small and/or sleeping child. A delightful experience as subways go.

The Chime-Long complex is like Disneyworld. There's the Safari Park, which is basically a zoo, a Crocodile Park, an amusement park, a water park, an international circus, and a big swanky hotel to see it all from. We just went to the Safari Park.

We took a shuttle bus from the Metro stop and wandered our way through, seeing apes (if it doesn't have a tail, it's not a monkey), pelicans, etc. Jim stopped to have his picture taken with a python (mouth taped shut). I helped Gus touch the snake to learn about him a bit. Once we reached the other end, we ate a quick lunch and got in a little train to see the Safari on Wheels part (which is about half the park). It was lunchtime for most of the animals, which was good b/c it was also really hot and the ones not eating were almost all snoozing. We saw lions and tigers and bears, and also giraffes and camels and run-of-the-mill American red deer (a guy actually got out of his car, which is against the rules, to take a picture of a DEER). Lots of animals, great safari. Jed fell asleep right at the end and was installed on my chest in the mei tai.

We then wandered back through the park and found the hold-a-baby-tiger area, which I really wanted to do, but since Jed and the baby tiger were napping it seemed unfair to wake them both up so we didn't. We did go to the giraffe area, and did the coolest thing. The zookeepers sell leafy branches for 10 yuan to feed the giraffes (I used to feed crackers to the giraffes as a kid, and the branches are much healthier for them and more fun). There are around 20 giraffes in the area, and whichever is hungry wanders over to the feeding area and looks for munchies. You pull off a bit of branch and offer it to the giraffe, and they wrap that huge tongue around it and pull it in. It was so much fun. Gus loved it, and Jed woke up in time to help too (he dealt really well with the fact that he woke up to a big giraffe tongue right near his face). One giraffe got the last bit of branch that just had a couple of leaves on each end, and he rolled that stick around and got every last bit of leaf off it and then spat out the stick. Apparently a giraffe's tongue is around 0.5 meters long. What a blast. The title of the area was "Feeding Giraffes with Joy". It was true!

Then Gus really wanted to see koalas, so we saw a bunch of sleeping koalas in the koala house. They only spend around 4 hours a day awake because their food is so un-nutritious. They don't have energy for anything else. And they wedge themselves into crooks of trees that look really uncomfortable, but snooze away anyhow.

Then we went by the giant panda house and saw some pandas eating, some playing, and some asleep in more uncomfortable-looking positions (seriously, I was afraid one of them was dead because no one living would want to wake up from that position). And then it was time to head back. At one point Gus looked at me very seriously and said, "Mommy, I think I'm going to fall asleep on the way back to the hotel." And he did, through about half the Metro ride.

We got back around 4 p.m., picked up the laundry and had a snack, played for a little while in the Swan Room and then started packing. Dinner was pizza delivery and some Chinese dishes from the deli. Jed is warming to pizza. So now that you are all informed, I will finish packing. Tomorrow after breakfast we head to the airport, and arrive at Incheon in South Korea at around 4 p.m. We'll spend the night at Incheon, then start the long trip home on Sunday.