Roar, Rumble and Snort: San Diego Zoo Stories

By Dani Dodge

It wasn’t easy. It certainly wasn’t pretty. Backing up may have been the worst. Although rounding the curves seemed just about as dicey.

Yes, I tried driving one of the San Diego Zoo’s iconic double-decked buses.

Just about anyone who has ever been to the 100-acre San Diego Zoo has ridden the buses that rumble around its perimeter. The buses have been a part of the zoo experience since a Model-T Ford circled the zoo in the 1920s. Double-decked buses started in 1982.

My trainer, bus driver extraordinaire Jorge Sanchez, spent a morning driving lesson reminding me to use the brakes, warning me about the wide turning radius, and calmly moving obstacles from my path. Fortunately for zoo guests, the majority of my training session occurred before the gates opened.

The San Diego Zoo has about 60 permanent employees who work in bus tours and often hires a few dozen more during the busy summer season. The bus drivers are cheery, lively folks who often have backgrounds in biology, public speaking and animal training or care. Many can speak more than one language.

Their tours often start out the same: “Welcome to the San Diego Zoo and welcome aboard. My name is (fill in the blank) and I’ll be your guide for the next 35 minutes or so. You’ve picked a great way to get a general overview of the plants and animals in our collection.”

From there each one puts his or her personal spin on the tour. Jorge lightens up the crowds with jokes even before he has pulled out of the bus loading area: “Why don’t animals play cards in Africa? Lots of cheetahs out there.”

My training adventure started about 7 a.m. to the sounds of peacocks shrieking, lions roaring and the hooting of a small ape called a siamang — a reverberating sound like laughter that builds and builds until it collapses into a giggle.

I began by driving around the Urban Jungle circle. It was much harder than I had expected. The back wheels wanted to go over the curbs as if some sort of freakish gravity pulled at them. Jorge explained that I needed to focus on the pivot point of the bus — the back wheels. Somehow, driving the bus is all about understanding how much room it needs to make a turn. And it’s about the mirrors.

“Why do accidents happen?” Jorge asked me. “Not using the mirrors appropriately.”

When you are driving a car you can just look over your shoulder. But on a 42-foot vehicle that’s not possible. Bus drivers must constantly monitor the what’s in front of them as well as the mirrors on both sides to see what’s on the side and back of their bus. For me, someone who has driven a compact most of her life, it was a foreign notion.

So, when it came to backing up this behemoth, I struggled. First attempt, I kept it relatively straight. Then, Jorge asked me to back up and park at a curb on my right. I went over it. The first time I tried to do the same with the curb on the left, Jorge darted in to move one of the zoo’s garbage cans, saving it from certain destruction.

My final test would be to drive the empty bus once around zoo’s perimeter.

Along the way, I saw a few people I knew.

“Got a new job, Dani?” they laughed.

I chuckled too. And I forgot to set the brake while I stopped to chat. Jorge shot me an alarmed look.

By the end of the three-hour training session, I was drained, but thrilled to have made it once around the zoo without major incident. And I had a newfound respect for zoo bus drivers. It was hard enough navigating the bus. Imagine — they also are dealing with guest questions, making sure passengers keep their arms in the bus, monitoring the radio and giving a pleasant, informative tour.

Zoo bus drivers, you can keep the keys. I’m happy just to take the tour.

Dani Dodge is a former newspaper reporter and editor now working at the San Diego Zoo. She can be reached at [email protected].