Yes, if an article was done on yesterday's event that would be the title. We started off the 'dry' morning with the sun peaking out at us. Great day for a trip to the Safari Zoo! …Or so it seemed. Little did we know Old Man Thunder had big plans for us. The Safari Zoo is owned by a wealthy man in Guangzhou and it is very nice, reminds me of our zoos. The kids were fascinated. We saw several pandas in exhibits like you would find at the Atlanta Zoo. Very nice, a definite step up from our previous zoo experience in Anhui a couple of years ago. We went on a safari train ride, seeing deer, yak, wilde beast (sp?), elephants, giraffe, goats and other antelope type critters, plus lions, tigers, and bears…Oh my! As we were driving through it started raining, then pouring. We were lucky the shelter was free o f crowds when they dropped us off. Then it really started getting wet. Then two other trains dropped off and everyone tried to squeeze into the shelter area. Connie was upset with the young people. She said they should leave since we have children and babies, but they pushed right into us and even tried to get passed us. After several minutes this rain storm passed. During the rainy season they come on and off. While this one was now finished, the rains were far from over. Connie, our guide, sends us on our way to see the pandas on our own so families could take their time and see what they want. We just had to meet back at set place in say 1 hour.
While on our way back, I decided we should buy one more umbrella (that way we had two: one for AL and one for Autumn). Mistake. Mistake. Mistake. This is what separated us from the others. We did meet up with Connie, who pointed in a direction and said go back to the bus. She didn’t come with us since she was waiting for other families. My first thought was “and how do we get back???” then my second thought was “she is pointing in this direction maybe it’s just straight ahead.” So I didn’t ask and we just went. Soon we realized we were catching up to no one and Connie was not coming up behind us. By this time, it was really raining once again. Thank goodness for our many umbrellas now, and soon we found a small shelter with at least 4 other people huddled under it. Then the bottom fell out. Wow! Serious rain flying at us in sheets. Crashing, bone chilling lightning zapping something nearby. We were soaked. By the time we were able to get out of there my sandals were so wet they were stretching out, so I had to take them off and run in the rain with Autumn bare foot. We never found Connie, but some nice young man who spoke some English talked us into walking through a store to the exit on the other side. I kept telling him I didn’t remember seeing the store when we came in, but in the end we tried it. Ta’ Da’! We made it. She had said go to the blue bus. Well now I had to laugh because there were 5 blue buses. But soon the driver was out waving us over. Once on board we had to wait for one other family, then it was a not so fun water soaked 40 minute drive back to the hotel. Where once there we stripped the girl of their wet clothes, dried them off and put clean dry clothes on, then threw them on the bed with a thick blanket on top to warm them up. They were quite happy with this. :-)
Angi
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