Zoo Babies

It's spring!! We set off to do our zoo walk around the other day and ran into a zoo volunteer who asked us if we'd seen the new babies yet. No, we hadn't and didn't know there were some. She quickly pointed out that there was a new baby sloth bear and a baby reindeer and where they were. I love zoo volunteers! If she hadn't shared with us we wouldn't have been looking for them.

The baby sloth bear was about a month old, born in March. He/she could be seen clinging to mom's back. The two were coming and going from their shelter. We had to wait a few minutes for them to appear but it was worth the wait.

The sloth bear is from South Asia and feeds on insects and fruit. Their favorite food is termites and they dig into termite mounds with their long claws and then suck the insects out. Guess that long nose helps.

Our next stop was the reindeer area and right before us was mom and baby. This baby was quite young, born early April according to the volunteer. Mom stationed herself between us and the baby so it was a little difficult to get a good shot at first. Eventually she moved away and tried to coax the little one to follow her.

Eventually we wandered around to the Australian outback area of our zoo and saw another volunteer standing there (knitting with hands that had to be cold--it was chilly) and I decided to ask if there were any joeys (baby kangaroo) this spring. She smiled and quickly pointed to a small kangaroo near us who had a joey in her pouch.

Maria, the kangaroo mom had produced a baby the year before but had rejected it. Fortunately the grandmother kangaroo accepted the baby and raised it. The volunteer said they were happy to see that this year the kangaroo mom had taken good care of her little one. His head popped out several times but he wasn't ready to leave the warmth and comfort of mom's pouch yet. Soon though. He was really getting too big to carry around.


The snow leopard cubs, the spring babies of last year, are getting big. Still cute and beautiful.

It was quite a good morning for us. When you have interesting things to look at, exercising isn't so bad.

Iceland - The East Coast

As we started out in the morning I asked to take one more look at Hofn where we'd had dinner the night before. At a bend in the road near where we ate there was a great view of four glacial fingers reflected in the water of the fjord (fjort). I could imagine a great picture with the sun rising. Well, the sun rose but it was well hidden by the clouds as were the glaciers. They were indiscernible. So much for the great shot.

Our drive took us along the east coast of Iceland where there are quite a few fjords. We wove our way down and back up sometimes climbing a mountainside and then descending to the sea again. All the while we were in and out of the clouds. The weather made the fjords mysterious in their shroud of fog and mist and at times even romantic as through the mist the harsh lines of rocks and cliffs and even rooftops were softened and mellowed.

It was a nice drive as we passed through several small towns finally stopping in Faskrudsfjordur at the Cafe Sumarlina which was on the second floor of a small wooden structure. It was quaint and the lunch was delicious and surprisingly not as high priced as most places we'd been so far.

Just up the road from where we had lunch we encountered the first tunnel of our trip. It looked kind of eerie with all the fog around it but this one at least was easy to navigate. (Yes, I'm foreshadowing.)

As we made our way around the fjords, we began to notice fish farms. Some were large operations and others only had a few rings of pens for raising their fish. Fish is quite a staple of the Icelandic diet, especially cod. I hadn't realized that they were actually raising some of their fish supply. I just assumed they were fishing the sea around them.

Skirting the coastline, I suddenly did a double take. REINDEER! Bob hit the brakes and thankfully with no one behind us backed up. I snapped a few pictures with one lens and quickly changed to another for a closer look. We had seen signs along the way--you know those yellow ones with the picture of deer, or other animals possibly on the street but thought it was just for deer or elk. What a fun surprise. It would be the first of several during our trip.

We arrived too early to check in to the Vinland Guesthouse so we drove along the fjord and crossed over to see a waterfall, the Hengifoss, said to be the tallest waterfall in Iceland. Unfortunately it was about a three mile round trip trek half of which was uphill. It was like climbing Mount Fuji all over again only this time it was Bob asking, "Shall we go?" We made it maybe halfway up and between the rain that started to fall and the climbing, we decided seeing the lower falls was enough. I got out my telescopic camera lens and zeroed in on the upper one. Close enough. We turned around and started back down hill.

Our guesthouse was reminiscent of a cabin in the Poconos. There were six small units in a wood frame building with a little porch around it. The shutters had a heart design cut into them. No heart shaped bathtub though. However the toilet looked like a throne. There was a TV, only the second one that we had in four days and this one had satellite but all you could get was the news from Great Britain and tons of shows in German and Icelandic. Still, Bob got to surf so he was happy.

Our dinner was in a nice little restaurant that offered BBQ ribs on the menu. While they weren't what I'd consider something common to Iceland, they sounded good and tasted even better. It was something other than soup or fish which we seemed to be eating a lot of.

That night there was not much hope of seeing the Northern Lights with all the rainy clouds but I still checked--just not all night. At least our window faced north so I didn't have to go outside to look. I stayed dry and warm.