I'm in Amsterdam for business and having seen a lot of the major zoos last year when I was here I wanted to try something different. Using Zootierliste for research I chose Aqua Zoo for the chance to see red howlers, red bellied lemurs, raccoon dogs, armadillo, azara's mara, ring tailed mongoose, bush dogs and beaver. Netherlands rail is great but it is quite a trip (about 2.5 hours) to get to Leeuwarden from Amsterdam. I ended up taking a taxi for the last bit but came back by bus and that was pretty quick and easy. To get there early I left Amsterdam in the cold, dark and wet. My wife would have said I was obsessive. It certainly seemed crazy a couple of times. The zoo isn't huge. I walked around in under 2 hours. There is a single sign posted path through the entire zoo but short cut paths once you get your bearings. I probably back tracked 3 or 4 times for the animals I really wanted to see. All the enclosures are large and well set out but it isn't a great zoo for wet weather and I got soaked continuing on despite the rain. It did break though about midday and a lot of animals came out then. The other challenge is that there is a lot of glass which can be a challenge to photograph through when the reflection is high. There was an advantage to having a big black coat on though. So did I see my wish list. More or less. There are two red howlers together with white faced saki. They have a smallish indoor area and can venture out to an island with a lot of trees. Once the weather cleared they headed straight out and got up pretty high to eat leaves. Attached to there hut is a similar indoor/outdoor step for squirrel monkeys. They must have had a troop of close to 20. The red bellied lemurs are in an enormous walk through exhibit along with red ruffed and ring tailed lemurs. The ruffed are the most outgoing spending most of the time on the grass or railings. The ring tailed climbed some bare branched once the sun came out to sun bake. The red bellied tended to stay in the bushes but were still easily visible. There was feeding at 3 but I had to get back to Amsterdam so couldn't stay that long. I was really hoping to see the raccoon dogs. They briefly had the in taronga zoo (probably sometime in the 80s and pre digital cameras) but they weren't on show long (don't know what happened to them). When I first arrived two dogs were hidden out of the rain under a heap of bamboo. It was difficult to photograph through glass with flash through the rain but hopefully I have something I can work with in photoshop. When the rain cleared I returned to their enclosure a few times but there was no sign of them. They share the enclosure with Canadian otters. The beaver was a no show the first through trips round but was lucky on the last time that one of them was out. It was a very large enclosure and the beaver was a long away from the viewing platform and mostly facing away from the camera but hopefully I have a photo. The armadillo and mara werepart of the indoor tropical house that had wild cavies, bettong, tenrec (a no show) , douroucoulis, fennec foxes and a lot of geoffrey's marmosets. Unfortunately both were no shows on every trip past but the rest of the exhibits were still worth it. The zoo also had a few other marmosets with a large group of black tufted ear marmosets that I hadn't seen before. The bush dogs had a large enclosure with lots of glass panels but unfortunately were a no show. There were a few mongooses - meerkats, yellow and banded but the ring tail wasn't on display. I'll post a few photos when I get back to Sydney and sort them out. Thanks Greg
