Kolmården Zoo, Sweden

Saturday, August 9, 2003

We rented a car for the first part of July, so on July 6 we drove out to Kolmården Djurpark (zoo). We've visited several zoos before, but this was the first one we visited in Europe. It was also the first one that Kajsa had ever been to.

One nice thing about this zoo was that the animals were frequently grouped together in large areas, instead of having separate small cages for each type of animal. For example, in the picture to the right the camels and yaks were together (along with a couple other animals...if you look closely you can see some sort of sheep or something in the picture).

And in the picture to the left the giraffes were with a couple types of deer and some other animals. This giraffe seemed to like people.

Sara liked this stork which was also in with the giraffe.

I can't be terribly specific about exactly what types of animals these were. That's partly because we were there over a month ago (I'm slow about putting up these web pages), and partly because most of the information about the animals was in Swedish.

The weather was nice -- warm, but not too hot. Good weather for visiting zoos...if it's too hot, the animals are all just laying in the shade. It did rain a bit, but it wasn't too bad. We had Kajsa's stroller, but she still doesn't like her stroller very much, so we also brought the tummy pack so we could carry her. She wasn't really old enough to enjoy the animals, but she seemed to have a good day anyway.

We found this wolverine near where we changed Kajsa's diaper in the afternoon. In another area nearby there were a lot of penguins (just this one kind though).

In the afternoon we went to the "Delfinarium" to see the dolphin show. It was the best one we had ever seen. There were about a dozen dolphins and about six trainers. It was pretty fancy, with lights and water falling from the ceiling into the pool. The show had a lot of variety, and the dolphins seemed quite talented. Some of them could jump very high out of the water.

The trainers also spent a lot of time in the water with the dolphins -- the dolphins could push them around (and even push them up out of the water) by the feet with their noses. We didn't get any pictures, but we enjoyed the show.

We ended the day by looking at the monkeys and other primates. Each type of monkey was in its own area, but there were a large number of each kind.

The young chimpanzees were fun to watch.

When we looked closely a set of Gibbons (I think), we noticed one with a tiny baby.

Unfortunately you can't really see it in the picture, but we were able to get a pretty good view with the binoculars.

Overall it was an enjoyable day. The zoo was quite pleasant, and the animals were fun to watch.

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