so again with a late post. but again, who cares? our fourth day in Charleston started late as we decided to sleep in since we didn’t have to be anywhere early in the morning. so we got up around 10 and were quickly alerted to the events going on in London and were deeply saddened and troubled that more people had been killed in the name of a false god. even more striking to us was the fact that London was our initial choice for a honeymoon location (followed by Paris, and then Charleston when Paris needed to be postponed). we were thankful that we weren’t in London this week and spent a short time praying for all those affected and involved in what was going on over there, especially with the beginning of the G8 Summit. after this we started to get clean and dressed so that we could catch the hotel shuttle into town.

we got off at the second stop which was right in front of the South Carolina Aquarium. we bought our tickets for the aquarium and then headed to the nearby cafe to have lunch which was quite good. after lunch we went through the aquarium. it was a great aquarium! the first really fun thing we saw was a river otter. a very, very lively river otter. he was literally bouncing off the walls, shooting through his little pool, and taking short breaks in his little hole where he had a ready supply of corn on the cob to snack on. we tried to get pictures of him, but he was too quick for us and ever eluded our photographic attempts. moving through the aquarium we saw lots of fun fish and other creatures. they had alligators, lots of turtles, venus fly traps, etc. we then got to the “big tank” which had 18 inch thick acrylic walls. this tank was amazing. there were little fish, big fish, and SHARKS. three of them! there was a nurse shark which is a breed that’s not very scary. quite docile, and i think you can even swim with them in certain areas of the Caribbean. there was also a smaller shark that i don’t remember the name of. he was pretty quick and was swimming around wildly.

then there was the “big daddy” shark. a 10 foot long sand tiger shark. he was moving very slowly and methodically through the water, making sure to swim directly toward the tank wall, teeth bared, to give the onlookers a good fright. sarah and i could not imagine what it would be like to see something like this in the water. after wondering this, she said, “this is why you couldn’t swim out to the dolphin yesterday. you might’ve seen one of THESE on the way!” there were two divers swimming in the big tank with these fish…..while feeding the smaller, less scary fish. why they were not attacked by the big daddy shark i will never know. again, i don’t think i could do that job. i think i would always be looking over my shoulder for that massive shark.

after spending about 45 minutes looking at the big tank, we decided to move on. we then got to the “touch tank” which was pretty disappointing. i thought they would have cool things that you could touch. but they basically only had bits of coral, a few hermit crabs, some starfish, and that’s about it. very disappointing. there were also tons of children around it, so we didn’t waste our time there.

then came the special Amazon exhibit that’s currently at the aquarium. it was pretty exciting. we were greeted at the entrance of the exhibit by two brightly colored macaw birds (really big parrots). i’ve seen macaws before, but none that were quite this big or brightly colored. they were hams for the camera and we got a good picture of one of them. we then came to the anteater….who was asleep and all bundled up. so boo to him. they had lots of different snakes and birds in this exhibit including piranha and an anaconda! the anaconda was 17 feet long and weighed about 250 pounds. the piranha were beautiful creatures. it looked as if they were sprinkled with glitter on their sides and they were so docile. it looked like they were just suspended in the water as there was almost no movement in them. this was greatly contrasted with a video they had playing next to the fish that showed them attacking a very unlucky bird who had decided to rest on the water just over a swarm of piranha. the video was quite breathtaking.

after going through the Amazon, we headed to the gift shop where we acquired two additions to our new family. bill the river otter, and barbara the manatee (plush, of course. we have room for a live otter. but not so much for a manatee). Sarah was greatly pleased with our purchases and giggled like a little school girl at them. we then spent about half an hour on the harbor deck just looking at the water and all the boats going by. Sarah started not feeling well so we caught the next shuttle and headed back to the hotel. her ickiness continued into the evening so we decided it would be Wendy’s for me and KFC for her for dinner. during dinner and after we watched a couple more episodes of 24 and then went to bed relatively early because we wanted to get up early the next morning to do some last minute sightseeing before we had to leave this beautiful city.