Make-A-Wish San Diego gave us the option of a third place to visit besides the zoo and SeaWorld. This one seemed to fit best what Joyanna would enjoy. It is a privately-owned, non-profit animal center. They endeavor to provide meaningful, once-in-a-lifetime experiences to children who have long-term or terminal illnesses. Kevin and Wendy Yates founded Nurtured by Nature and primarily run it. They conducted our tour today. They were so wonderful and the experience itself was so personal and laid-back. We enjoyed it immensely. Joyanna had the opportunity to personally feed and pet lemurs, a sloth, two kinds of armadillos, a porcupine, a rabbit, pacas, cavies, kangaroos and otters. She loved the pacas the best. They are a type of rodent, spotted like a fawn. She got very comfortable feeding them oatmeal banana balls and peanuts. After that, she was comfortable with the cavies and the kangaroos. Coming into the experience, she knew about kangaroos and that they jumped, so she enjoyed seeing them. Buckaroo and Boomerang even jumped a little for her today. Ethan liked the porcupine the best. He even spontaneously said, "Bye, bye porcupine," as we left his enclosure. She will look at the pictures for this day for a long time and remember all the animals she got to encounter.
After naps, we decided to walk a block from our hotel to the beach at sunset. It was beautiful once again! We strolled a bit and then decided we were hungry for Italian so we tried a local restaurant called Caffe Bella Italiana. It was delicious! Then back to the hotel to settle in for bedtime.
Tomorrow we go to SeaWorld. Ben started calling it the fish zoo today and that seems to have stuck. Joyanna has adopted that name and that's fine with us.