"Honey, there's a lemur in the road"

So last Saturday, 2 December, John and I went east to Fota Island Wildlife Park. This is Cork's answer to a zoo, and it is very low-guilt as most of the animals just kind of roam around. Like, with no cages or fences. No kidding. This is the whole point of the park, and I may have not expressed that adequately to John who really had no idea what to expect but was VERY surprised when we turned a corner to find wallabies just chillin' in the sun.
We were gambling against a really bad weather forecast, and we were fortunate to squeeze out a few nice hours from the day that quickly turned nasty.
So as the top picture demonstrates, here's the lemur! There was a whole pack of them just roaming around, grooming, etc. We could have reached out and touched this "robot king of the monkey thing" but we didn't want to get bitten. Mostly the animals just ignored you. Or ran away, in the case of the second photo where I tried to get up close and personal with the Argentinian rabbit-looking thing.

Here's the wallaby maxin' and relaxin' in the sun. We were concerned that animals from Africa/Asia/Australia would not be active because of the colder climate here. On the contrary, we have never seen animals more active in any zoo. (And, if you read John's blog while we were in China, I LOVE the zoo!)

There were a lot of "best" parts of the Fota Wildlife Park, but my favorite by far was the "lesser" Red Panda! It took circling the globe a few times and about 20,000 frequent flyer miles, but I finally got better pictures of my favorite critters. Apparently they liked the cold climate better than the stifling conditions in Shanghai because they were moving about so much here at Fota that it was challenging to get a still shot! There were two of these cuties climbing a tree and wandering around, and I was thrilled!

Fota gets three stars in Frommer's travel guide and is great for kids. Yes, we were the only couple there without a stroller, but that was okay. We really enjoyed it. Since there were about 10 people there total, we decided that November is a pretty decent time to visit. I imagine that in the summer the place is crawling with kids and families!

One last note: the monkeys! When we came to the center of the park where monkeys are kept on little islands separated only by a few feet (easily overcome by swinging to the next tree) the gibbons were going nuts and hooting and hollering. It was quite a show! All the kids there (and me) were pretty impressed! Does anyone know if monkeys can swim? I mean, how often to those things get loose off the island?

Later today I'll send a few pics of our few minutes we spent in Cobh later in the day. It was a great place and we hope to spend more time there--maybe this weekend but the forecast sounds grim.

Just FYI: the radio here is great but they just said that the storms that are coming in will bring winds up to 120KM. Umm. . . I'm no genius, but that's A LOT of wind! And to think I was so glad we wouldn't have any hurricane-type weather while we are here! I was wrong! Today on one of the roads there was a problem with the road being slick because SEAWEED was blown up onto the road!

It's a wild life! More to come!