I’m going to let most of these photos speak for themselves with short captions inbetween. This was on February 9, 2010 at Chengdu Panda Base. The day was stunning with more pandas than we had time to see ……but we made the very best of our full day there with Lichunlin and one of nutritionists escorting us around the base . The second half of the day we were on our own and poking around every corner of this stunning , fully landscaped paradise in the middle of the city of Chengdu.
The Chinese New Year decorations were just going up, vs. Dianas and my trip where they were just coming down. All the red made for some incredible photo!
A new expansion was added since our visit in 2008 on top of the hill where few tourists go. This was our favorite place to just take our time photographing and observing the cubs and older pandas as well as some getting ready to breed
Do you all remember Siyuan…..she was my first panda I ever had my photo taken with in 2006. We found her on top of the hill munching boo and taking in the cool sunshine and fresh breezes that day. Siyuan is easy to recognize by her white paw
Here I am with Siyuan in 2006
Siyuan “bleeting” at us like a goat. I think we woke her up and surprised her as we came around the corner
The youngsters were BEARY tired…..sleeping off their bamboo and panda bread meals in the lazy afternoon
Ohhhhhh to be a panda!
Gayle and I on one of the new concrete benches made to look like a tree trunk. Thanks Lichunlin for taking this photo!
More of the hill dwelling pandas
Kind of like a bobsledding team!
What a sweet expression
We both had the opportunity to have our photo taken with one of the teenagers. I need to find out who this was. There was a BBC reporter having her photo taken too and it was kind of crazy during the “shoot”. The idiot lady was hugging and kissing the panda so hard I was just waiting to take photos of a mauling……hey…shes a reporter…she would understand the need to get a story right!! LOL!
Seriously though……that was the most unbelievable and irresponsible thing I had seen in a long time. The staff looked pretty shocked too. Good thing it was over fast!
All you see are the top of our heads because all we want to do is look at the panda practically sitting in our laps!! Our photographer keeps saying LOOK UP. Well the panda is certainly well trained because she looked up on command. We were content to gaze in disbelief at our panda friend and count our blessings that we had this opportunity to “hang out” with a giant panda TWICE on this journey
Another lovely beast
Ms. Mei Lan who was shipped to Chengdu from Atlanta was given the royal welcome with little touches like this in the office
Bamboo overload
Reclining Panda
MANY MORE PANDA PHOTOS TO COME THIS WEEK INCLUDING THE RED PANDAS WE GOT TO HOLD!!!
Below are a couple of iphone images from this weekend in Portland too on our Saturday Walk. Don’t miss the new videos below of the magnolias, doxies, etc etc. I loaded quite a few and did an Ipadio update
