A Day at the Zoo!

I have been holding myself back from doing a lot of sight seeing because the weather has been poor ever since arriving in Taipei. I am told that if you go to the south of Taiwan the weather is much more pleasant, but not to hold my breath on seeing nice weather in Taipei. A British friend even said that it rains more here than in the U.K. which definitely says something for the weather. 

However, knowing that if I hold back for too long, I may end up not doing anything at all, I decided to head to the Taipei Zoo with a couple of my classmates. 

As we shuffled through the gates of the zoo and the attendants took entrance tickets, we were also handed a slip of paper, which under further investigation turned out to be a ticket designating a time to go and visit the panda exhibit. 

I guess the pandas are so popular that the zoo needs to designate times for the hoards of people visiting the zoo in order to avoid chaos, and I would assume stressing the panda out too much. Although we had every intention of visiting the pandas, by the time our turn came around we were all too tired from the masses of people and walking around the rest of the zoo. 

Although we "missed out" on the pandas, by far my favourite part of the zoo was the butterfly exhibit. The butterflies were free to fly about the biosphere type building to feed on the flowers and different fruits that were set out for them. 

Here are a couple of pictures I manage to capture with my macro lens. 

Wikipedia has taught me that there are approximately 377 species of butterfly in Taiwan of which approximately 56 are endemic to the island. Needless to say, they are spectacular to photograph if you can catch them in time! 

Other than the butterflies, the Taipei Zoo is home to most other animals that you would expect to see at a zoo in pretty much any other part of the world. 

I personally liked these ones

This black bear seemed pretty content rolling around playing with it's two tires.

And like the rest of the flamingos in the zoo, this one was concentrating so hard on eating that he didn't even notice the hundreds of people crowded around its living space. 

Though the zoo wasn't any more remarkable than any other zoo I have been to, for a mere 1.50 CAD entry fee I can say I was able to get my moneys worth and take some pretty good photos at the same time. 

The only tip I would have for anyone wanting to go is to visit on a weekday to avoid the crowds!