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A Special Tour of the Honolulu Zoo! |
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A while back I had the treat of a behind the scenes tour of the Honolulu Zoo with the Bytemarks gang. Bytemarks is a group of local nerds led by Bert Lum who meet for lunch once a month and take on adventures that most normal peeps don’t get to see. And we are definitely not “normal”  …Bytemarks members range from IT people, engineers, a librarian, me the token Realtor, photographers and mad scientists. The common ground is that we all share a love of technology. |
 Welcome to the Honolulu Zoo! |
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 Hot fence helps prevent jail breaks...
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Now we head to the new Elephant Enclosure, and got the chance to get in the area before the new tenants were moved in. A much nicer home than the old digs, the new hacienda features several swimming pools as well as expanded grounds. |
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 Can you spot the elephant? The new Elephant home features state of the art technology to control the big kids if they get into an Elephant Hissy Fit and become potentially dangerous. Essentially it is like the trash compactor from Star Wars that has panels to enclose and hold the elephant securely. The elephant is then turned over onto it’s side which calms it down enough so that attendants can administer whatever needs to be done to control the situation! |
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 Dr. Ben has Mr. Fox in Quarantine before he can meet his new girlfriend... The Fox's girlfriend, not Docs |
From there we moseyed over to the veterinarian clinic to meet up with Dr. Ben Okimoto. The new 7,000-square-foot clinic was dedicated in 2005 and is an up-to-date facility, complete with rooms for exams, X-rays, surgery and recovery. It allows medical staff to keep sick animals away from those in for routine examinations. It also serves as a morgue for autopsies as well as a quarantine area for new animals joining the Zoo from outside Hawaii. | ||
 In the Zoo Kitchen, everybody gets special food every day! We finished up our tour at the Kitchen. Not the Snack Bar Kitchen, this one is dedicated to preparing meals for all the animals every day. Special diets for everybody can include “Fuzzies”, which are depicted here with their own special walk in cooler. A tasty meal of Adult Mice, anyone?  Fuzzies are Fuzzalicious!
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| We all had a really great time and learned a lot of information from Tommy and Doctor Ben. We appreciate the Zootabulous Tour!
Aloha from Hawaii, |
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Tag-Archive for ◊ Honolulu ◊
Asian Pacific Economic Conference snarls Honolulu Roadways
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| Road closures, rerouted traffic and restricted parking are going to plague Oahu until the Dog and Pony Show disbands on November 13th. And parks and beaches will also be closed, find out where and when here! Oh, and here too…I’ll keep y’all updated as to any thing else around town you might need to know. All of Oahu will be under lock down when Michell takes the First Wives Club on a tour of the Island…
APEC Hawaii Travel Lanes affected And try to figure this mess out: APEC Hawaii Recommended Travel Routes Parking? What parking? APEC Hawaii Parking Restricitions Wake me up when it’s over… |
No Snoozin’! We’re Zoo Cruzin’ !
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| My friends April and Noel Williams (@AprilMWilliams and @NoelFWilliams on Twitter) were in Honolulu recently to escape the weather in Chi Town and we decided to do some Zoo Crusin’! In 1876, King David Kalākaua made royal lands near the slopes of Diamond Head available for the establishment of a public park for the people. The King kept his collection of exotic birds and horses here and in 1877 the marshes, ponds and lagoons in the area were beautified by the subscriber based Kapiʻolani Park Association who opened up the area as Queen Kapiʻolani Park.
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| I haven’t been to the Honolulu Zoo since 1996, and a lot has changed. Gone are most of the old style cages and in place are newer free-range enclosures for the animals and birds. A new entrance has been added as well as an expanded gift shop. Comfort stations and snack bars are located strategically around the 42 acres so it is a more enjoyable experience with rest stops than it was formerly.
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 Here's looking at you, Kid! |
| I have to admit I favor the celebrity animals like the tigers and lions and cute little monkeys over the reptiles and the chimpanzees, who seemed to need anger management classes. I wondered why there were so many tigers and was told they had a litter of tiger kittens last year and they were supposed to go to zoos in Japan this year. Unfortunately, the recent Japan Earthquake and Tsunami has put those plans on hold, so Honolulu has lots of big kitties for you to visit! | |
 We have our Picnic, do you? |
One of the nice things about the Honolulu Zoo is it also functions as a park area, so you can bring in outside food and drink to have a picnic on the grounds. Most other Zoo’s I’ve been to don’t allow that. The grounds are beautifully maintained and there is plenty of open space away from the animal exhibits to enjoy. We had a perfect day, overcast with some showers so it wasn’t too hot. Lots of places to duck out of the rain and wait for it to pass. Still, it is Hawaii so dress for the heat, wear sunscreen and carry a bottle of water with you. And bring a camera! I took a lot of fun zoo pics here!
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| Typically in the heat of midday many of the residents will be out of sight and napping. They are probably saying to themselves “What are those silly humans doing standing around in this weather?” But I swear while looking at the tops of the Lion ears peeking over their little hill in the enclosure I heard them singing this song…
Aloha,
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Chow, bella! |
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I’m going to confess there are some foods, and food venues, that I have steered away from with a vengeance. Past experiences left me swearing I would NEVER, EVER, chow down these regrettable decisions again. What are these epicurean experiences that I shunned, you ask? Pizza. And Food Trucks.
*GASP* How could I not like pizza? That is practically un-American! Well, the town I grew up in, Schenectady, NY,
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 *UGH* Bad Pizza! |
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| had to have the worst pizza on the planet. Half cooked bread dough by the slice, smothered in a can of tomato sauce, dusted with cheap plastic cheese and embellished with pools of oily matter reflecting off its nebulous surface. I honestly thought you had to blot the grease off of pizza with a paper napkin before you eat it. Like you have to take lobster out of its shell: you have to blot your pizza. If it happened to be upscale pizza you would get a few coins of hard red stuff described to me as “pepperoni”, dried out to the point that I’m convinced a dental office owned all the pizza joints in town because a cracked tooth was often inevitable. But they did float on the grease, like meaty little life rafts, so they were easy to pick off. | |
 Zpizza Ward
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So when Zpizza opened up at Ward Center I was skeptical at best. Drove by it every day for months on my way to work. Meh. Pizza. Well, along came a Tweetup and I was told they had salads, so I didn’t have to eat pizza. The resulting experience has changed my mind about pizza; at least Zpizza Pizza. Owner Karen brought out generous samples of fresh made, organic ingredient infused, little bits of Pizzaliciousness. |
| Zpizza is a franchise from California and Karen and Caesar took the plunge to open their first shop at Ward. Recently they opened a second one in Kailua, which makes it even easier for me to say “I’m too tired to cook dinner” (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) several times a week.
I have to admit I am hooked on the Pear Gorgonzola Rustica Pizza. To the point where I walk in the door, the staff knows what I want without me telling them. Should my first tattoo be a slice of the PGR? Perhaps… Follow @zpizzahawaii, they will follow you back and interact with your tweets. And check out some Pizza Pics here! |
 A slice of Heaven: homemade Garlic Sauce, fresh Basil & Tomato |
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Food Trucks. Roach Coaches. Yuck. Never having experienced anything from a truck growing up on the mainland other than the Good Humor Man and the Library Bookmobile, I was intrigued by all the Plate Lunch Wagons around town when I moved to Hawaii. And I swore all the trucks had to be owned by the same guy (not a Dentist) because the food was exactly the same no matter which truck I tried. Two scoops of dried out white rice with some sort of super salty, rawhide textured, sugar drenched Teriyaki sauce mystery meat or chicken and a scoop of mayonnaise flooded elbow noodles married to chopped up potato chunks known as Macaroni Salad. Or the omnipresent white rice, steam table hamburger patty and fried egg drenched in brown gravy known as “Loco Moco” , which I was convinced was ancient Hawaiian for “Hockey Puck with Macaroni Salad”. Since then I have discovered really yummy Loco Moco, but that is another tale.
 The Ono to Go Mobile, THE BEST FOOD TRUCK!!!
When all around entrepreneur Wedge Lee announced on Twitter he was starting a food truck I was thinking “Sheesh, I gotta try it to be polite because Wedge is a Twitter pal and I need to support his new business…”
Lo and behold, Ono To Go has proved to serve up superb restaurant quality food on wheels, using the finest and freshest ingredients. The menu varies every day and they are open from 11 am to 2:30 pm. But get there long before 2:30, because their food is so Onolicious, when they run out, they run out!  Lemon Herb Shrimp Plate Lemon Herb Shrimp, Pork Chops, Steak, Fish of the Day. All grilled up on premises and served with white or brown rice and THE WORLD’S BEST MAC SALAD!!! What did I say before about Mac Salad? This is in it’s own cosmic culinary league. Do not get between this girl and Ono to Go Mac Salad or you will experience the wrath of Bizzilla. And did I mention the fresh Poke? I’ve had some okay Poke. And some really not so okay Poke. You gotta try this okay dokey Poke! Not your average hokey Poke… Fresh Limu, Ahi, Kauai Sea Salt and Wedge’s secret magic spices make this another fave of mine. Take a peek at some grinds here!
Beyond the good food, Wedge makes sure you know the menu and where they are located via @onotogo on Twitter. Other food trucks try and get the word out, but they are inconsistent at best, often saying they will be at some location and never showing up or moving someplace else and not letting any one know. Way to lose a client, you other food truck fools, you! So that’s it. Turns out I do like Pizza if it’s Zpizza, and I will eat at a food truck if it’s Ono to Go. And you know what? I have yet to see a Good Humor truck or a Bookmobile since I’ve been in Hawaii. Hmm…Books and Ice Cream? Could be a new Food Truck Concept! “Read it and Eat”? Happy Eating,
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