Erlangen part IV - Zoo time

After a rather thoughtful Saturday evening, it was time to start a beautiful Sunday. Again, Nürnberg greeted me wit sunshine and blue skies, but unlike the day before, I headed right to the suburbs. My plan was to spend the morning at the Nürnberg Zoo, head back to the city around lunchtime and visit a couple of museums in the afternoon. But then again, plans don't always go as planned... 

After bumping into a kangaroo meeting...

...A couple of meerkat models...

...A giraffe brunch and monkey exercises...

...I thought it would be wonderful to warm myself in the jungle house. My camera however decided that the difference in temperature would be too big to handle.

The Zoo must have foreseen such situation as it offers a device to clean-blow the fogged glasses and lenses, but after using it, I realized the fog had actually accumulated inside my camera. Should I have just waited for the camera to adapt instead of maybe blowing the moisture inside with the machine? Or did it get there all by itself?

I was having similar problems in Erlangen's greenhouse, but they resolved after a while with the help of a handkerchief. Here however, there was nothing on the outside to wipe away and the jungle effect on my camera reminded me of my Tour of Austria adventure a couple of years ago when a massive rainstorm caused moisture to creep behind the lens. It took days for it to evaporate.

This time however things looked more serious. Also, I had the entire Zoo ahead of me and still had a whole week to spend in Erlangen and how could I possibly be without my camera? All of sudden it occured to me how attatched I was to it and why my sister insists on calling me a "Japanese tourist" wherever we go. Uhm. 
Long story short told: after balancing with my damaged camera in one hand and the mobile phone replacement in the other, still hoping that the first one will recover, I slowly began to realize that the picctures I took from time to time became less and less blurry. Yay for the camera, the show can go on!

Only now I took a proper look around the jungle, where colourful butterflies and birds would fly around freely and even a couple of monkeys would climb up and down the rich green vegetation. 

No matter how I tried, I couldn't manage to catch those huge blue butterflies with my camera. Turns out that the monkey was more lucky, while I stood there in awe - who knew monkeys would eat butterflies?

The turtles and see cows on te other hand seemed to be absolutely inumpressed, slowly floating in the tropical waters.

Is it time for the dolphin presentation yet?

Beautiful underwater world

Hi there!

Off to the kittens. I expected the impressive roaring that could be heard all over the Zoo to come from a lion, but it turned out that the tiger was the one who had a lot to complain.

Play and eat is something you expect ice bears to do, but then again they surprised me with eating celery and fennel.

Sunbathing

Bye, bye, water world - off to the equines.

Obviously, the Christmas tree leftovers are routinely delivered to the Zoo animals as I could see them inside almost every fencing. What a wonderful example of "two birds with one stone".

Mrs. Ostrich in her beauty ritual

Everybody's darling

More horns

As I really wanted to see the entire Zoo, I ended up doing an extra round by the water in the lower part of it. However, the birds that were supposed to be here were kept inside, and the rest of the inhabitants must have been hiding. In the end, this turned out to be the only time-waste of the day but at least I got sme extra fitness and vitamine D points. 

However, I ended up being far behind my schedule. It was already late afternoon when I headed back towards the city, and I'd certainly have to hurry if I wanted to visit one or te other museum. 

~ to be continued ~