the night before, jeff and i were arguing if lions are actually cats. i mean, you know, same way tigers are considered cats? i stubbornly insisted that lions belong to the lion family. like they are their own brand or something.

“how can you not know this?!” he asked incredulously.

“google it!” i challenged him, mentally crossing my fingers he’s wrong and i’m right.

he was right. jeez, he’s such a nerd. #bitter

“and do you know hippos practically live underwater?” he added rather matter-of-factly. i kind of had a feeling he was rubbing it in and secretly enjoying every minute of it. this is a guy who can differentiate dinosaurs by their names, for crying out loud! the only dinosaur name i know of is littlefoot from “the land before time.”

gotta give it to the dude. i have no choice.

anyway, the reason we were talking about animals was because i was going to the zoo the next day with kb and her family. for the record, our conversations are not always geeky like that. we usually discuss light topics such as global warming, the hypocrisies of the american government, the plight of syrian refugees and its consequences on world economy, etc. nothing that would make ordinary brains explode. like i said, light stuff.

so the moment i saw this gorilla, i couldn’t resist the urge to call and tell him, “your twin brother very close relative said hi.” partly out of spite for the night before, and partly to ask how to operate his friggin’ camera which he was kind enough to lend me.

speaking of cameras, at the risk of sounding like jeff, i must admit that i enjoyed using the sony a7 because of its lightness. of course i still shoot in auto because that’s just how i roll. but it wasn’t when i started editing that i got to fully appreciate the camera for the quality of its pictures.

i’m not saying that the pictures i took are up there on a professional level. all i’m saying is, it exceeded my standards.

i don’t have very high standards.

inclusive of the $31.60 ticket is a safari tour where you get to see different kinds of grassland animals from far away a safe distance. the place is HUGE! i’m talking 550+ acres huge. i may not have an idea of how big an acre is but 550 acres pretty much sounds like the whole island of cebu to me so yes, i reckon it’s a really really big land area for a zoo to occupy on. the animals run wild and free. (well, sort of.)

i’m surprised they didn’t offer binoculars to their guests. you couldn’t really see the rhinos from this distance. or most of the animals, for that matter. however, the truck does move in somewhat closer to them at some point. otherwise, this is pretty much what you’ll see. well, it was pretty much how i saw it anyway. (although it must have been worse for kb. not only is she near-sighted but she also left her glasses in the car. lol. talk about blurry!)

if the succeeding pictures look like i’m up close and personal with the animals, that’s because i cropped the hell out of them. and they still ended up sharp so make that another reason why i’m loving the sony camera more. it has something to do with the megapixels, i reckon. whatever. ask jeff.

on this safari tour, the guide said we were lucky to catch the hippos during their feeding. it’s rare to find them on land, she said. said that they’re immersed in water 80% percent of the time because they don’t have sweat glands so it’s their way of keeping themselves cool. although personally, i don’t know why they have to bother considering how cold melbourne can be. must be those fats. who knows?

now, for my million-dollar question: are zebra stripes white on black or black on white? because sometimes, they look freakin’ brown to me.

after the tour, we followed the walking trail to see more of their animals. again, from afar. african wild dogs, ostriches, kangaroos, lions, etc. animals whose pictures you won’t see in here because, f*ck it, even the sony gave up trying zooming in in vain.

oh, and that last picture up there? i don’t know if you can see it but those are actually koalas. my first time to ever see koalas and it had to feel like i was looking for waldo.

so, no, technically, as far as i’m concerned, i have not seen a koala. like, ever.

but the meerkats made up for it, though. it’s just weird how they seem so small and so different compared to the meerkat commercial i see on tv. i expected them to be bigger.

i know, some people aren’t really comfortable with the idea of supporting zoos because they take away the animals from their natural habitat and enclose them in fences. but i think that only applies to those zoos which do not have the proper facility and a decent amount of space for the animals to move around in.

in fairness to werribee zoo, they promote the conservation of animals that might have gone extinct if not for their successful breeding and recovery programs. in the grand scheme of things, i think that’s better than nothing.

*9 weeks pregnant