San Diego Zoo Safari Park

Spent the day at the Diego Zoo Safari Park nearby to San Marcos. A lovely spring day in Southern California. Blue sky, cooling breezes, temperature reaching 21c, just like the best of rare English summer days.

San Diego Zoo is renown throughout the world for its conservation and breeding programmes, the Safari Park is an oppportunity to see animals in a more natural environment and they've made a good job of it.

Not cheap to get in and they're always after your dollars when you inside too. Instead of lining up with everyone else to see the butterfies or cheetah run you can pay to be a privilage guest. Then there all the other safari options; trike bikes, covered wagon, aerial ropeway and so on, all over $50 a go. You can stay overnight for $140 minimum. Even if you didn't do any of these add-ons, it would be easy for a family to spend $100s on a visit.

Conservation and breeding doesn't come cheap so I think it is money well spent when you see the work the Zoo is doing. This shot is of a cheetah and a couple of her cubs feeding. She had 7 cubs all told and we arrived there just at the right time to see the family in action rather than dozing under the tree.

The gorillas were another great attraction and provided the opportunity for some intimate shots of the animals as well as watching their behaviour.

The final destination was Condor Ridge where we were able to see this magnificant Californian Condor at close quarters. Extinct in California in the 1980s they have been successfully re-introduced in recent years.

It's a very pleasant part of California around here, not too built up with largly well kept homes and good roads and all about are rolling hills covered in sage scrub.

For our evening meal we cooked a "Blue Apron" meal, or rather two of them. Blue Apron sends you all the stuff you need for the recipe in a box, all portioned out. All you have to do it wash, chop and cook. Very tasty too and some good recipe ideas to try out ourselves.