Howie
Donkey in a hat
Yeah yeah I know, stand alone zoos aren't traditionally covered in Trip Reports, but these are not traditional times, man, and we have to take whatever we can get.
So, Chester Zoo it is, then.
As expected, tickets are pre-book only, all of the indoor exhibits are currently unavailable and the restaurants, gift shops and most of the food outlets are closed too.
Also expected on this particular day was buckets and buckets of rain. I'm not talking about light drizzle or scattered showers here - it was teeming down the entire day, which meant that a good portion of the animals that weren't closed spited us anyway cos they were hiding from the rain.
In every traditional sense of the word, this trip was an epic fail.
BUT... this trip wasn't about getting <animal> creds, the sole purpose of this trip was to help to support the zoo which, as we all know, was only a week or 2 away from going under. So in that respect, it was a complete success and Lord knows, after 3 months of lockdown it felt amazing just going somewhere... anywhere!
So, without any further ado, have a bunch of rain-soaked animal pictures.
Elephants first:
The giraffes were cool. I like giraffes, me:
How's about this for camouflage?
As you can see, it was very, very wet... but at least the ducks seemed to like it:
And the penguins didn't seem to mind either:
They've got red pandas at Chester Zoo, which are brilliant animals, the only other place I've seen red pandas at is Kölmarden. Here though, it seemed as though we were gonna get spited, no sign of them at first, most people gave up looking after a few minutes and moved on. They were looking in the wrong place - eventually Mrs Howie spotted him, hiding waaay up in the tree canopy, probably about 40 - 50ft in the air!
It's a Knuffelbeer! ?
Not sure what this is, but it had a helluva long tongue:
Not sure what these are either, but they looked very cute huddling together out of the rain:
Some other random things:
Donkey-type things. No hats.
All of the monkeys spited us - chimps, gibbons, gorillas, orangutans - all of 'em. Anything even remotely ape-like was indoors hiding from the rain. Pussy-whipped, sorry-arse mo-fo's. Screw the monkeys though, next we came to the big cats!
Check this guy out:
To be fair, he was hiding from the rain too, but at least you could see him. Bit of a dude, huh?
Meanwhile, his bitches, his ho's, his little harim, were chilling inside:
*just noticed the awful glass reflection on that pic, soz! ?
They got cheetahs too, they're pretty cool:
The cheetah enclosure was one of the best ones I thought, with elevated wooden walkways over the top from one end to the other. Neat. Very theme-park ish.
In fact, if it wasn't for the complete absence of any rides, the whole day kinda felt a bit theme-parky, a much needed hint of normality. From the dude in the high-vis marshalling everyone to their parking space, to the turnstile entrance, to the pathways, the landscaping and dare I say it, random attempts at 'theming' dotted around the place. Yeah, we enjoyed it.
Unfortunately, I don't see Chester Zoo doing a Kölmarden and installing a massive RMC anytime soon but still, the overall theme parky type vibe still remains. Which is a good thing. ?
The gardens are nice:
If knuffelbeers were flowers:
I could easily imagine this at the entrance to a cool cred:
Well into the afternoon now, and the rain just kept on coming, but at least that meant most of the other visitors had given up by this point:
Finally, we arrived at the rhinos. Love rhinos, me, amazing animals. Donate to VETPAW every month because of a 10 second video clip that I saw a few years ago featuring a rhino. This isn't the place to go into details, but the thought of someone killing a rhino for nothing more than the horn (well, any animal cruelty really) makes my blood boil like nothing else.
Look at 'em. Magnificent things:
This one's called Neil.
Rhino Neil, geddit?
After that, we found ourselves back at the elephants near the entrance. There was still a couple of hours left so in theory we could have done another lap and picked up some of the stuff we missed, but to be honest the constant monsoon was starting to wear a bit thin now and we decided to call it a day.
We'd done our bit, turned up, spent a few quid and hopefully helped to keep the place afloat (pun intended) for a while longer.
Recommend you doing the same. Not necessarily Chester, but any zoo/safari park/aquarium near you - they all could use some support right now and we found it a great way to get in the mood for having days out again.
You might even get to see a Knuffelbeer. ?
So, Chester Zoo it is, then.
As expected, tickets are pre-book only, all of the indoor exhibits are currently unavailable and the restaurants, gift shops and most of the food outlets are closed too.
Also expected on this particular day was buckets and buckets of rain. I'm not talking about light drizzle or scattered showers here - it was teeming down the entire day, which meant that a good portion of the animals that weren't closed spited us anyway cos they were hiding from the rain.
In every traditional sense of the word, this trip was an epic fail.
BUT... this trip wasn't about getting <animal> creds, the sole purpose of this trip was to help to support the zoo which, as we all know, was only a week or 2 away from going under. So in that respect, it was a complete success and Lord knows, after 3 months of lockdown it felt amazing just going somewhere... anywhere!
So, without any further ado, have a bunch of rain-soaked animal pictures.
Elephants first:
The giraffes were cool. I like giraffes, me:
How's about this for camouflage?
As you can see, it was very, very wet... but at least the ducks seemed to like it:
And the penguins didn't seem to mind either:
They've got red pandas at Chester Zoo, which are brilliant animals, the only other place I've seen red pandas at is Kölmarden. Here though, it seemed as though we were gonna get spited, no sign of them at first, most people gave up looking after a few minutes and moved on. They were looking in the wrong place - eventually Mrs Howie spotted him, hiding waaay up in the tree canopy, probably about 40 - 50ft in the air!
It's a Knuffelbeer! ?
Not sure what this is, but it had a helluva long tongue:
Not sure what these are either, but they looked very cute huddling together out of the rain:
Some other random things:
Donkey-type things. No hats.
All of the monkeys spited us - chimps, gibbons, gorillas, orangutans - all of 'em. Anything even remotely ape-like was indoors hiding from the rain. Pussy-whipped, sorry-arse mo-fo's. Screw the monkeys though, next we came to the big cats!
Check this guy out:
To be fair, he was hiding from the rain too, but at least you could see him. Bit of a dude, huh?
Meanwhile, his bitches, his ho's, his little harim, were chilling inside:
*just noticed the awful glass reflection on that pic, soz! ?
They got cheetahs too, they're pretty cool:
The cheetah enclosure was one of the best ones I thought, with elevated wooden walkways over the top from one end to the other. Neat. Very theme-park ish.
In fact, if it wasn't for the complete absence of any rides, the whole day kinda felt a bit theme-parky, a much needed hint of normality. From the dude in the high-vis marshalling everyone to their parking space, to the turnstile entrance, to the pathways, the landscaping and dare I say it, random attempts at 'theming' dotted around the place. Yeah, we enjoyed it.
Unfortunately, I don't see Chester Zoo doing a Kölmarden and installing a massive RMC anytime soon but still, the overall theme parky type vibe still remains. Which is a good thing. ?
The gardens are nice:
If knuffelbeers were flowers:
I could easily imagine this at the entrance to a cool cred:
Well into the afternoon now, and the rain just kept on coming, but at least that meant most of the other visitors had given up by this point:
Finally, we arrived at the rhinos. Love rhinos, me, amazing animals. Donate to VETPAW every month because of a 10 second video clip that I saw a few years ago featuring a rhino. This isn't the place to go into details, but the thought of someone killing a rhino for nothing more than the horn (well, any animal cruelty really) makes my blood boil like nothing else.
Look at 'em. Magnificent things:
This one's called Neil.
Rhino Neil, geddit?
After that, we found ourselves back at the elephants near the entrance. There was still a couple of hours left so in theory we could have done another lap and picked up some of the stuff we missed, but to be honest the constant monsoon was starting to wear a bit thin now and we decided to call it a day.
We'd done our bit, turned up, spent a few quid and hopefully helped to keep the place afloat (pun intended) for a while longer.
Recommend you doing the same. Not necessarily Chester, but any zoo/safari park/aquarium near you - they all could use some support right now and we found it a great way to get in the mood for having days out again.
You might even get to see a Knuffelbeer. ?
