Seaworld Orlando

We weren't entirely sure about Orlando as a destination, but that was where we had booked our flight to, so we figured we'd spend a few days here and do a park or two.

After lots of consideration we had decided not to do Disneyland.  Shock, horror I know to be in Orlando and not do Disney, but we weren't convinced that it was really enough of our thing given the price of it.

We opted to do Universal Studios and Seaworld and as we had booked a place to stay that was quite close to the Seaworld park, that was the first place that we went to here.

We arrived just in time to catch the start of one of the dolphin shows, so dashed round there quickly.  The show was a mix of aerial acrobatics and dolphins, with a few brightly plumaged macaws added in at one stage.

It was good enough as a show, but personally I would have liked more focus on the dolphins.

The dolphins were obviously very good at their part.  They performed their leaps and flips with almost perfect timing synchronisation.  

There is always a slight doubt in my mind when going somewhere like this because I wonder about whether it is right for us to keep creatures like dolphins and whales and have them doing acrobatics for us.  In general I conclude that the answer probably depends on the park and how they treat them.

According to Seaworld, and as far as we can see there is no suggestion that they are not being honest, their parks are pretty good.  They have a good environment for the animals, which have largely been born in captivity rather than taken from the wild.

They do a lot of conservation and rescue work, releasing most rescues once they are rehabilitated and homing the few that can't be released.  They also have quite a lot of educational programmes, including snippets of information on environmental issues fed to visitors around the park.  I'm not sure that I thought that these would particularly change behaviour of anyone not already open to recycling and so forth, but it can't harm to try.

They also say that no animal is ever forced to perform.  They only use positive reinforcement in their training, and they get fed the same amount whether during the show or not.  They also mention that they train all of the animals regardless of whether they will perform, because it enables them to more easily care for them and treat them when they are unwell without stressing the animal more, as well as simply keeping them fit and active.

I know that it is easy to justify these things if you want to, but they do genuinely seem to treat the animals well and the success of their breeding programme supports that.

So anyway, we followed the dolphin show with a sealion and otter show.  This was like a pirate pantomime, with lots of naughtiness from the animal 'actors'.  It was OK, but definitely more for the children in the audience.

The woman in the show was better and coped well with the smaller audience meaning less participation in the jokes, but the main guy seemed a bit less adaptable.

One of the funniest parts though was the very miserable reaction of a dad who had been selected to participate.  He had sat in the front of the splash zone, but when his participation involved the sealion deliberately giving him a drenching he looked most unhappy.

The sealion was of course the star of the show.

After the show we went to see the rest of the sealions and found some to be very vocal about getting the fish from the visitors.

We wandered around the park for a while, around the various tanks.  There was a nice set of aquariums with smaller aquatic creatures, including a couple with some fabulous looking jelly fish.

The sharks were interesting in their variety, but just about everywhere has an underwater tunnel these days, so it has lost its gloss somehow.

I did rather like the fact that they had a light that you could turn on behind the shark's purse or egg sack, so that you could see the tiny sharks wriggling around inside.

The park was heavily advertising 'Antarctica', the new attraction that they were building.  It doesn't open for a while, but as readers will know, we have recently been to the real thing, so we weren't too disappointed at missing it.

We were more disappointed to miss the polar bears though.  It was probably the part that I was most looking forward to, and after failing to find it, we discovered that it had been closed over the Christmas period to fit in the Santa express.  Hmmm.  Not happy.

But we got over our disappointment and had a drink whilst watching the oyster fishers 'diving' for the oysters in the tank so that customers could select their oyster and take it to be opened to find out their pearl inside.  

Despite having six potential colours there, we never saw anyone get a pink, peach or gold one, let alone the elusive black one.  But then realistically I am sure no one was expecting anything else.

There were of course a number of 'lovely settings' that you could also purchase to show off your invariably small white or cream pearl, which I am not sure all of the parents had banked on when deciding at the price of getting your own pearl wasn't too bad.

Our last show of the day was definitely the best.  The orka, or killer whale show features the much advertised star Shamu, who was born in the park.  We decided to go for the very back of the splash zone, where we hoped we would avoid getting very wet, but still get great views.  It was a good choice.

Those sitting at the front did get very wet; even if the general show doesn't achieve that, one of the tricks is for the Orkas to swim around flicking the water out with their tails, so that does get you!

We certainly enjoyed watching the Orkas.  They seemed to enjoy themselves and clearly loved the attention that they got from their trainers when they did their stuff.

We spent a while at the ray pool, where Nic made a few new fishy friends. A couple in particular seemed very keen to come over when he put his hand in the water; I'm sure it had nothing to do with the fact that they know that some people feed them.

From there we went and watched people hand feeding the dolphins.  We didn't feed them, and just watched from one end, but we still got a great view of them and I had one swim close enough to give it a quick stroke.  That was allowed, I wasn't being naughty.

And of course being Florida we had to go and see the manatees.  These huge endangered creatures, which are the somewhat less fairytale but supposedly 'real' mermaids, are strange looking things.  They sort of drift around their pool, often on their backs.

Overall we quite enjoyed our day at Seaworld.  The Orkas were definitely the highlight though.

More of Sea Lion Island

Magellanic penguins

After the tour around the island the first day, our plan was to walk around it the second day, and spend a bit longer with the penguins.  We set off after breakfast with our packed lunches,and plenty of layers to fight off the rather cold wind that always seems to be blowing through the islands.
We walked over to the beach where the elephant seals and magellanic penguins would be, and where you can sometimes see orcas out looking for a meal.  There were no orcas out today though.

Elephant seal

The magellanics kept their distance - they do seem to be the most timid and least friendly of the penguins we've encountered so far - but it was still good to watch them hovering around the water's edge, apparently not being entirely sure whether or not they wanted to take the plunge into the cold sea.

There were a lot of elephant seals out on the beach, some of them huge ones.  You have to be careful as you approach them because if you don't look carefully you can mistake them for a rock and end up getting too close for comfort.

Elephant seals squaring up

We watched a couple of seals get into a bit of a tiff and start growling and barking (or whatever seals do) at each other.  They don't seem like they would be able to do a great deal of damage in a fight, as they just face up to each other and bite, but in fact they are quite powerful and even though this seemed more like a spat than an all out fight, they drew blood.  They settled down after a while though, presumably having established an appropriate pecking order.

Diddle dee

We were just going back up the beach with the intention of walking over to the other side of the island to the rockhoppers, when it started to rain.  It rained hard and at some point at least it hailed.  Now I had my waterproof trousers on, but Nic had decided not to bother, and he in particular was getting really quite wet. So we decided that as the lodge wasn't far away, we would retreat to give the rain a chance to pass over, and for Nic to dry out. 

Snipe

We stayed at the lodge for lunch and set out again in the afternoon.
Although the other birds along the way weren't our main interest, we were at least able to recognise a few of the main types found here.  There are the little snipes that run around in amongst the grasses and the diddle dee, the bigger striated and crested caracaras, and the even bigger turkey vultures.  We had no idea what most of the others were, but never mind.

Nic in the tussac grass

This time we did make it the two and a half miles to the rockhoppers.  We took the longer route around as we had been warned that it is possible to get horribly lost in the huge tussac grass.  Seeing the size and expensive of it for ourselves, we could see the potential for trouble so kept well away.

Rockhopper calling

The rockhoppers are probably the cutest looking of the penguins here and it is fascinating the way they hop along and over the rocky area they choose to make their home on.  Most of the ones here are the chicks, not yet ready to go out to sea themselves.  There are some adults standing guard, but most are out getting dinner for the little ones.

Rockhopper penguin

At this time of year, the young ones are grown to full size and are in various stages of shedding their downy feathers and growing their distinctive yellow tufts.  A few are at the unfortunate point where they have lost all the fluffy feathers from their head and neck, but none from the rest of their body, which gives them that baldy look like turkeys or vultures.

Rockhopper penguin spat

The rockhoppers generally appeared to be quite placid creatures.  Every so often there will be a territorial spat or some other disagreement, but mostly they stayed huddled on their own space, puffing themselves up a little to keep out the wind, and just quietly looked around to see what was going on.

Rockhopper pecks Nic's boot

HMS Sheffield Memorial

A few were more inquisitive and came a bit closer to us to check us out.  Nic was sat on the rocks and one of the braver ones gradually approached him and had a quite peck at his boot, but soon hopped back off again.  I am pleased to say that neither penguin nor boot was traumatised by the experience.

We stayed watching them for about an hour or so before heading back to the lodge to warm up and have dinner.

First though, we took a look at the nearby memorial to HMS Sheffield and those who died on it in 1982.  The islanders are grateful to those who freed them and, along with those who visit to pay their respects, they take good care of the various memorials on the islands.

Gentoos in the moonlight

In the evening there was a fabulous moon above the Gentoos, which looked really amazing.  Again sadly my pictures don't do it justice.

Valdivia



Gardel the duck, Valdivia



From Pucon we caught a bus south to Valdivia.  It is another fairly small town, but we feel that it is right to see some of the smaller places as well as the big cities, as it gives you a better overall impression of the country that you are in.  Much as I like cities, I don't think you could really say you have got any idea of what England is like if you just went to London, Manchester and Liverpool.  We know we don't see even nearly enough of any country that we visit despite being here for so long, but at least we can add in a few Whitstables, Brightons and so forth along the way.



Sea lions at the fishmarket, Valdivia



We stayed in a good hostel here that was pleased to advertise its apparently very socialable duck called Gardel.



Sea lions at the fishmarket, Valdivia





Sea lions at the fishmarket, Valdivia



Valdivia has some nice parks, but Nic was feeling a bit under the weather with a cold and as we are heading to the frozen lakes of Patagonia, it seemed best to give him a chance to kick that, rather that look at more trees and lakes, even if these didn't require a few hours of hiking to get there.  Similarly - and I realise that this may be a shock for some of you - we decided not to visit the local Kunstmann Brewery.



Sea lions at the fishmarket, Valdivia



We did take a look around the town.  The highlight, aside from the smell, was the local fish market on the riverside, where it is not only the cormorants and other birds that are on the lookout for scraps.  They are also visited by a number of huge black sealions, who sit up on the concrete edge of the market and wait for handouts.  When we were there there were often four or five on the ledges and more in the water.



Nic with girly drink, Valdivia



The other thing that Valdivia specialises in, like a number of places in this area, is chocolate. We didn't sampple the chocolates themselves, but did stop for hot chocolate and cakes in one of the cafes. Nic as ever ordered the most girly looking drink on the menu, while I had a rather larger than expected piece of chocolate and mint cake, but it was all very tasty.



In the evening we found a bar that was quite good, if crowded with people whose average age must have been somewhat younger than ours, where they actually make you pay up front because they have problems with people running off without paying. It took us by surprise as we have got so used to paying afterwards.  We were amused to see that at a certain point in the evening many people who had previously been drinking beers etc, suddenly moved on to having a float.  We have subsequently seen that apparently beer and ice cream is common around here, so we assume it was a beer float.  Maybe next time!