After breakfast and a quick stop off at the verduraria…
we went downtown to the Children’s Museum at the Abasto Mall.
We had a little laugh that the price of admission for the children, was more than double the price of admission for adults.
We ALL had so much fun at the museum. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.
Temaiken a gorgeous zoo in Belen de Escobar. Since the schools here in Buenos Aires have not let out for Spring Break yet, we found that we had the zoo almost completely to ourselves. I wasn’t sure what the difference between a biopark and zoo was, but I did find out that bioparks are more sensitive to the needs of the animals, keep them in a habitat congruent to their species and this one also recues endangered animals. Many of the animals are not caged at all, but the park has been developed so that you can safely observe the animals, sometimes at extremely close range.
The park is absolutely gorgeous, but in a very natural way.
Here we have Carter conquering his fear of the bird with the long and curved bill, making the biggest noises, just daring him to try and get past on the stairs. He and Tricia were the only ones who dared attempt the feat.
We learned lots of fun and interesting facts about birds. In the exhibit of the penguin, we were able to feel the temperature necessary to keep the birdie inside the egg alive. It was quite warm!
Izzy climbed up on this rock to get a great view of the Wallabys that were hopping nearby.
We loved watching the hippos above and below the water. Those animals are huge! One of them came right up to us at the window.
There were several huge aviaries at the park. This one housed the bats. It was HOT and STINKY in there and kind of scary too!
This morning, most of us walked to the train and took it one stop to San Isidro. There we walked a couple of blocks and purchased medialunas and bread at the Hausbrot Bakery. All of their products are made with whole wheat and are completely natural and taste amazing! Then we walked back to the fruit and vegetable market called El Campo and bought various fresh fruits. After our short train ride home, we enjoyed eating our purchases.
We called the gymnastics coach that I had arranged a meeting with the other day and wrote about here. Apparently, my contact forgot to mention to him that he had this private lesson today. Nevertheless, he told us to come along.
It turns out that the coach, Jorge, has been coaching elite gymnastics for girls and has worked with the Argentine Olympians for the past 16 years.
Carter got quite the practice session with him today.
Afterwards, he told us that the facility where the elite gymnasts train is much nicer and invited Carter to train there on Thursday. Jorge couldn’t have been nicer or more helpful.
We had Izzy with us, but Jonah and Courtney had gone with Papa to the mission offices. I was worried that they might be dying of boredom. That couldn’t have been farther from the truth. There were quite a few missionaries in for interviews and they loved chatting with the kids while they were waiting their turn.
By now, we had to have two remises to take us all back to the house since Papa wasn’t ready to leave. We went the back way along the autopista Buen Ayre. It is not very densely populated along that route and so there are lots of trees and grass fields. It was a beautiful drive as dusk fell.
Later that night, we had ice cream delivered—a kilo of chocolate and a half kilo of lemon, but, of course, with 9 ice cream lovers in the house there was nothing leftover.
