Much ado about the zoo

On Thursday Jenna had her first school field trip. She was so excited! Not only did she get to ride the bus but Mommy & Daddy both got to go along! In one way the Okinawa Zoo is a lot like Lincoln Park. Lincoln Park is the free zoo that's right smack in the middle of Chicago. It's very impressive considering where it's located and the quality of the cages.

Fast forward to Okinawa zoo...

We left so depressed that we decided if we do go back it will only be to take pictures of the condition of the whole place. The cages were so...concrete. The poor little chimpanzee had nothing but concrete in his cage. Give the poor little guy a tree! The Bengal tiger, lionness and lion were directly next to each other in comparably concrete cages. The only exciting thing is that you could lean forward, stick your hand through the bars and touch the lion. I mean if you really want to do that and pull back a nub then this is the place for you! The anteaters were pretty neat to see. The hippos enclosure was different. Whether or not the over-sized trough the keeper was cleaning out is actually their pool we don't know. I've never seen hippos out of the water. I don't see how you could fit one hippo at a time in that little pool. Poor things.


The only thing we didn't get to see was the Hokkaido brown bear. That happened to be the one thing that I did want to see. There were tons of snakes in the reptile house. We did see a variation of the Habu. It's the Himehabu. Still a viper! Honestly, the reptile house was one of the better ones I've seen. Maybe that's because the snakes here are quite impressive.

Before we got to the zoo I saw that the season pass was only 2,000 yen which is 20 USD. That's a great price for a season pass but...we won't be going back.