Where have you been?

A student of mine asked me if I liked Gogilla. (pronounced go-gee-la) "Gogilla, what the hell is a Gogilla", I asked. She explained that "it is a big, lizard-like monster that fights against other large monsters to save Tokyo. Like giant turtles, moths and stuff. And he breathes fire." Ah ha, I thought, "You mean god-zilla." "Godzilla? No, I mean Gogilla."

You see, reader, in the Polish language when d and z appear next to each other (like in Godzilla) the sound is (often) not 'de' followed by 'zee', but rather 'gee'. So Godzilla becomes Gogilla. To Poles there is no such thing as Godzilla, Truckzilla, or, my favorite, Bridezilla.



These are the final photos from the San Diego Zoo. I hope you enjoyed them.



After a brief pause for a "Ruben's Rant" we will dive into our Sea World photos and then onto the interesting desert photos!

Some of the flowers at the zoo.

A fun thing to do at the zoo is to find animals that look like our favorite animated animal friends. My personal favorite was this wild boar who looked just like the cursed boar god Nago from Princess Mononoke.

Two other favorites were Pumbaa and Timon from the Lion King.


And naturally here is a lazy Shenzi, also from the Lion King.

As today is a holiday in Poland (Corpus Christi) I thought I would post twice. Here are photos of one of the Polar Bears at the San Diego Zoo. It must be terribly hot for them in San Diego and I have even heard that in summer they often provided blocks of ice for the animals to cool down with. This guy seems to be resting easy though, you can even see a bit of drool as he comes alive from a deep sleep.

lol - there were tons of monkeys at the zoo when we were there.

Now for some primate photos from the San Diego Zoo. This guy is enjoying some afternoon leaves in his very nice home. You can see in the right hand photo how nice some of the displays can be. It's not nature but pretty close.

A very photogenic gentleman.


And his friend.

The zoo often allows the guest to get into the act as well!

IMHO the coolest thing we saw at the zoo was a huge wolf. As we were walking from the primate area towards the hippos we happened upon a few zoo handlers who were walking the wolf. You can see his face pretty well in this photo and the other shows him enjoying some treats.

The handlers said that wolfs do not like to be around people (or other animals) and are therefor very nervous in the zoo. To overcome this they pair the wolfs up with dogs. The idea is that once the wolf trusts or befriends the dog some of the dog's calm around people will rub off on the wolf. Intersting theory but this wolf was still a bit unsure of all the people. One thing I like about these two photos is that you can really see the size of the wolf. He is at least twice the size of the dog!

By far my personal favorite display is that of the hippopotamuses. In the two above photos you can see the basic layout. There is a bit of dry ground and then there is a small lake with a thick glass wall for viewing. I don't know if they are always in the water but whenever I have been down to the zoo they are in the water chilling as we see them here. It's really neat because you have such a great vew of the animals. Plus there are always schools of fish swimming about and birds loafing around. Here we can also see the common tourist too.


And naturally you can get good photos of them.


With a bit of Photoshop magic you can combine two photos to make one perfect one. Find a good background with the hippos and a nice foreground and voi-la, a magnificent yet fake photograph.

Sorry I have been such a lazy SOB, I will try to be better in the future. As a consolation I have made some long overdue updates to the site including a nice new photo of myself on the About Us page. I have also set up a Destination Guide as a directory by location (by arbitrary 'lable' actually) of my photos.

So, back to our trip. As you can tell from the title and the photo above we visited the San Diego Zoo next. It is about fourty minutes drive from my sister's house and she and one of my nephews went with us.

The best thing about the zoo, in addition to the conservation and research they do, is the way the animal exhibits are set up. It seems that little expense has been spared and each exhibit looks like a real jungle, desert, or other natural habitat. Above we can see the hyena exhibit which has an African savannah look going. Anyway, the hyenas looks more or less happy and this one took an interest in the tour bus, another fantastic feature of the zoo, and one of the smelly tourists aboard in particular.

Below we can see some photos of the many species of birds present at the park. Like the hyena exhibit the bird aviaries and open bird ponds have a very natural feel to them. Some birds, like the peacock shown here, are allowed to wander the park at will.

So we have had a long weekend due to two holidays and I haven't been motivated to post. First was the May 1st Holiday, or Labor Day as the communists like to call it. And today, May 3rd, is National 3rd of May Holiday. Catchy name although its more commonly called Constitution Day (which makes more sence because it is a day to celebrate the original Polish constitution). Any-who, I have been lazy lately so no posts. Here, however, are links to our photos from the trip. My girlfriend posted many of them on Picasa and now I pass them on to you. I will continue to post pictures and stories but if you want to peek into the future here you go!

• Los Angeles
• Easter
• San Diego Zoo
• Sea World
• Mexico
• The River
• Hoover Dam
• Utah
• Hollywood