The Williams Family: Buin Zoo

This weekend's big outing was to the Buin Zoo, outside of Santiago a little ways. Caleb has been asking to go to the zoo all week, so he was really looking forward to today, and he was also very excited to get to take trains (both Metro and regional trains) to get there, and each time Landon saw one pulling in or out of the stations he got very excited and moved his arm up and down signaling how he and Caleb used to do while saying "Choo-Choo!"

We got to the zoo around 10:45, which appeared to be on the early side for people here because, though a good number of families got off the train with us to go to the zoo, it seemed as though we had the entire place to ourselves. Probably a good thing so we didn't have to fight crowds or long lines or compete for animal viewing space. One of the first things I saw was pretty cool - this sign, and several others throughout the park, showed pictures of different zoo animals with quotes, either from scripture or from Mother Teresa about God's creation. Definitely not something we would expect to see at a zoo in the States.

(Translation: Many, Lord my God, are the works you have done. Psalms 40:5)

This is Caleb looking for the giraffes so he could show them to us. Walking in stride with daddy, hands in seriously thoughtful searching position...

Some of Jimmy's close up camera work (he proudly took credit for taking these close up shots)...

They came over to us to say hello (or perhaps waiting in hopes we would feed them...)

Landon seems to like visiting the animals much more than Caleb did at a similar age, and his favorite was definitely the wolves (lobos), or "Dogs!!" as he referred to them repeatedly and excitedly.

In addition to searching for the giraffes, Caleb was asking for elephants. We weren't sure if there were any or not, but we heard one and got our hopes up. As we got over to that area, we realized we had been hearing it on a recording as part of the music playing. But then we turned the corner and saw this - a robot elephant - but we didn't tell Caleb that, and just played it up that wow there is the elephant! It seems like he bought it :) It was actually pretty real looking and it moved its head, ears and trunk and made elephant sounds.

Apparently the reason for a fake elephant was threefold: Elephants are accustomed to being in herds of 5-6, and without the others, they get depressed; Elephants walk up to 10 km (a bit over 6 miles) each day, so they require very vast amounts of land to live comfortably and not become stressed and depressed; and I can't remember the last one, but they all made sense and kind of made you feel glad that they didn't have an elephant being kept in inadequate conditions.