Dad and I were both in bed by 7:30pm last night, meaning we were up at 4am ready to go. We forced ourselves to snooze for another two hours until 6am at which point we got up, got dressed, and headed out for the day. We grabbed a quick breakfast from a bakery café on the way down to the harbor. Breakfast included a slice of the BEST banana bread and for me, a latte. We ate our breakfast on a bench in Hyde Park under a beautiful tree canopy, watching as people started their mornings. Apparently, the culture here is one of health and fitness, so uh, not me. In their parks and in other areas, they have what look like playgrounds, but they are really workout areas. They include pull up bars, monkey bars, and other workout encouraging machines. I wonder if I lived somewhere that really encouraged being active if things would be different or if I would find some other excuse to live a lazy lifestyle.
We finished our breakfast and kept walking towards the wharfs. We arrived before the ticket booths opened (oops), so we just wandered around people watching and stopped to pick up some postcards and made our way back to the booths. Peter recommended that we take a trip to Taronga Zoo, so we found a deal for fifty-five Australian dollars ($38ish American dollars) each to ride the ferry over, the Sky Safari cable cars up, entry into the zoo, and the ferry ride back. The ferry ride over was fantastic. At about 15 minutes, we got a great view of the bridge, the opera house, and the rest of the harbor.
We disembarked from the ferry and rode the cable cars to the upper entry into the zoo. While in the cars, we passed over the elephants, and despite the smell, Dad and I were so excited.
We entered the zoo and immediately headed to the koalas. We wandered around the zoo aimlessly, mostly because I have ZERO sense of direction (I really needed you, Preston) and saw everything we wanted to see. In the last area of the park, we walked through the Australian native animals enclosure. We saw kangaroos, wallabies, and even more koalas. At this point, we noticed an information booth in which you could purchase animal encounters. We decided to do the koala encounter and secured the next to last opening for the day! During the koala encounter, we got to go into the enclosure and get up close to Jerry, a one year old koala, and take pictures with him and ask any questions. Seriously, this was an amazing experience!
Jerry!! 
“Not drunk, just digesting.” -Jerry and his handler
In some parts of Australia you can touch the koalas, but in New South Wales, you cannot. There are two main killers of koalas: chlamydia and stress. In an effort to prevent stressing the koalas, the government restricts who can interact with the koalas. In addition to the safety of the koala, the rules are in place to protect us too. In the wild, a koalas instinct is to move upward into the tree when they feel unsafe. If you’re holding a koala and their claws are in your arm when they get scared, they would move upwards to your face.. with their very sharp claws. All of this to say that while I wish I could have touched or held a koala, I really appreciated that the handlers took the time to explain the WHY behind the rules. The ladies who sold us the tickets told us we could get through the zoo in two to three hours. Five hours later, Dad and I finally left the zoo only because we needed to grab some food before the Bridge Climb at 6:30pm, which I’ll talk about in another post. I finished the day with over 23,000 steps and over 10 miles walked!!!
Global Gal 