Sydney, Australia (Day 3)

I apologize for not putting this up two days ago (maybe yesterday...depends where you are in the world) like I should have.

The day in question here (Thursday, March 24) was spent at the Taronga Zoo.  As I'm reasonably pressed for time here, I'll just give the highlights quickly and let the pictures do the rest of the talking

• View of Sydney Harbour on the ferry ride and from the zoo.  Wow.
• Koalas.  That's it.  Koalas.  They are awesome.  (You know how people are said to have "spirit animals"?  I think the koala is mine.)
• Kangaroos, wallabies, emus and so on.  Those guys are pretty awesome too.  Somewhat frustratingly they'd walk to the opposite end of the exhibit no matter what I did.  So I've just got the lazy ones who were resting.
• It's an old joke (old as the earth) but the platypus.  It's like a mini beaver that was cross-bred with a duck.  And if you get what the joke was you get one virtual cookie.
• Bird show.  We always seem to go to bird shows no matter what zoo it is, and the same tricks and routines are starting to become a little repetitive.  But it's still really quite something.  And then having an Andean Condor swoop over your head en route to the stage is nothing short of amazing.
• Meerkats.  These little guys are, in my mind, classed like otters, which, in turn, are like perpetual puppies out in the wild.
• Gorillas.  They're always fun to watch, and having a zoo keeper explaining the hierarchy of the family group and why certain things are happening makes it all the more interesting. 

And that's it.  There were, of course, a lot more animals, such as lions, snow leopards, snakes, lizars, seals, giraffes, zebras, elephants and so on and so forth.  They may or may not be in the pictures below (the number of which has been trimmed down somewhat.  I originally had forty-two but I realized that's probably too much).

Today we'll be visiting our first of the Lord of the Rings sets, although I'm not sure which one it is.  I will say though that New Zealand is absolutely amazing.  We're staying in Methven for a few days, a small village with less than 1400 inhabitants.  According to Wikipedia it served as a base for cast and crew when Edoras was being filmed, so that may be where we're going today.  Wouldn't be too surprising, as we're on some massive plains with a mountainous ridge on the horizon.

Enough of that, though.  You'll see that tonight (tomorrow?).  I hope.