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I had a lot of difficulty with my camera here. I so wished for macro lens because there are times when I’m not so lucky and the cage bars can still be seen, no matter how I fix my settings.

Things I saw/did on this trip:
1. Some people really can’t read signs. Aside from the “Do not feed the monkeys on the road” sign, which was promptly ignored (we could see that from the pretzel one monkey was holding), they have no qualms violating some of the tigers’ personal space. There was one sign that warned people about stretching their hands towards the tigers, but the others just had to ram their phone cams up the white tiger’s face. I could see he was barely tolerating them. I took a shot, but I took it from afar.

2. Ok, there was one instance when I was stubborn enough to go to a forbidden area. I wanted to take a shot of the lion’s face but I couldn’t get rid of the cage bars so I positioned myself in a spot where the lighting was more helpful and where the bars were widely spaced. The shot had to be taken quickly because the lion suddenly faced me and I didn’t want to be cat chow.

3. Pretty girl in the Zoobic jeep. Hahahaha! I had to take a picture but sadly, the photo did not do her looks justice.

4. One rodent noticed that I was going to take a picture of him. He was facing the other side of his cage. He went to me and…I think he posed? Unfortunately, I wasn’t quick enough to do the appropriate depth-of-field. There were too many people encroaching my space.

5. Aetas included in the zoo’s attraction. W00t??? I was thinking that there’s something seriously wrong about it (last I checked Aetas are still humans), but the zoo keepers justified it by saying that this was originally the Aetas’ land and they didn’t want to drive these people away. I was pretty impressed with the natives’ performance, though. They were very agile!

6. The animals look healthy, their coats shiny and bright. That’s what I’m thankful for. I saw how badly the animals in Manila Zoo are treated and it’s a far cry from this. The lion here actually looks majestic, while the one in Manila Zoo looked like Scar from Disney’s The Lion King. The only thing that really annoyed me was that some of the visitors would try to tease the animals…when they had been warned that they shouldn’t.

7. There are 36 tigers in Zoobic. Too bad I accidentally deleted the one where a group seemed to be in a meeting.