Candy (13 april 2013 - 16 february 2015) i will miss you - very much :_(

today we tried out the aqua terra zoo, as we both have not been visiting this zoo for over several years. the last time i was here, was eight years ago; nina has not been here for even longer. it was a sunday, the weather was not too good, and the minute we walked through the entrance door, we knew this would be a day in the crowd. what we did not remember, was how small and narrow the corridors and passageways were, which made the crowd even more crowded. and so, after we made it past the cash desk and into the top floor, we decided to take a break from all the people and went to the rooftop cafe[01], enjoyed a coffee and the amazing view. better prepared at what will await us, we finally made the descent through the hoards of people. and we were rewarded with wonderfully colourful fish[02-09], and other, not so colourful fish[11-14]. in a huge tank they also had sharks[10,31,37-40,45] and some big rays[15-16], that look like they are smiling when you see their underside. unfortunately no picture i made of that turned out to be in focus. beautiful and a tiny bit of disconcerting are the nautilus[30], and the jellyfish[82-85]. same applies for the starfish[86-87], the sea cucumber[88], and the sea anemones[89-90], although the latter two we already had touched in canada in the aquarium in ucluelet; so they were not so strange to us anymore. more familiar were all the reptiles they had there, like the tiny chameleon[17-18], the gila monster[21-22], geckos[23-29], and iguanas[51-54]. in the "tropic house" section of the building there are loads of birds, like the superb starling[63-66,74], the java sparrow[55-56], the violet starling[67], and the impressive yellow-beaked hornbill[57-62]. very, very cute were the cuddling flying foxes[72-73] - too bad i could not get closer to them, as they were hanging way out of reach of the visitors. less shy were the lovely little common marmosets[68-71] and cotton-top tamarins[77-81]. they even came so close, that some visitor could even feed them. spread all over the floors were even more reptiles[94-100] and snakes[92-93]. the reptiles look pretty dehydrated, as if their skin is way too big for the rest of the body. but i guess it is ok this way. again and yet again, i am fascinated by snake-skin. so, the aqua terra zoo is pretty amazing, but way too crowded on weekends. thus, the next time we will go there will be during the week, in the hope that there will be less people. nonetheless, it is highly recommendable to go there, as it is really interesting and fun to see the animals there (especially the flying foxes).