Haven’t been doing much the past few days – there’s not much left I want to see around here, and bad weather means even a wander along the beach doesn’t sound good.

This is the circus:

This was taken just after the show, as I was leaving, because I like all the lights on the big top.  This is also the only photo you’re going to get, because they don’t let you take pictures or video of the show itself.

The circus is known for its performing animals, and it started off with an enormous metal fence around the ring, because they brought lions out first.  There was a whole group of them, but only a couple doing the most elaborate tricks – and the ringmaster helpfully called out their names for the audience.  The lioness Nairobi is either the most experienced or the most intelligent, because she was doing a lot of the fancy tricks like standing on her hind legs, and doing a balancing act on top of an enormous cylinder as it was rolling around.

Masai was the lion who did a lot of the ‘trust’ tricks, such as taking chicken from a skewer the trainer held in his mouth – seriously, they were nose-to-nose.  He also roared at the end, which also a trust exercise, really; asking for aggressive behaviour without actual aggression behind it.

They also had pigs and goats – the pig tricks were more of a comedy routine, but I was impressed with the way they showed off the goats’ climbing ability and balance.  There were two goats, and they both spun in circles on their hind legs, but one climbed a ladder, spun around on the top, and then climbed down.

Five miniature horses also took the stage, doing tricks like standing on their hind legs in a row – essentially, the first one reared up and rested its front hooves on a special stand, then the one behind it rested its front hooves on its back, and so on.  They also circled the arena with their shoulders level, which meant the one on the outside was cantering while the one on the inside was walking.  And this was all done without reins, just signals – it was pretty amazing.

They also had a pony ridden by a rhesus monkey, and another monkey that rode a small cycle.  At the end they had a monkey race – three monkeys on three ponies, racing around the arena.

The animals were the main attraction, but they also had plenty of talented people in the show as well.  One of the first acts was three women on the silks – the one where there are two long silk ropes like coloured sashes, and they do all kinds of crazy stuff while twisting themselves up in it and basically demonstrating they’re amazingly flexible and probably have more strength in one leg than you do in your whole body.

A young boy and an older man (possibly his father) put on a floor-level acrobat show – the boy doing handstand on the man’s shoulders, that kind of thing.  At one point, the kid was doing a handstand on a single hand, supported by just one of the man’s hands.

They also had clowns, who had some brilliant hand-eye coordination with a lot of juggling/catching tricks.  The final one involved an audience member tossing a lemon to the arena and the clown catching it on a thin skewer held in his mouth.  You need to be pretty damn good to do that.

Two young girls also did tricks in hoops suspended in the air, showing off incredible balance – at one point, one of them was basically balancing on her knees, on a thin hoop that’s about teen feet in the air.

The same boy from the acrobat act and a girl from the hoop act paired up to do what was called a ‘double trapeze’.  Basically one trapeze is shared by two people, and they use each other as support and counterbalance to get themselves into some pretty crazy positions.  At one point, the boy was dangling upside down with his knees hooked over the trapeze, supporting the girl back-to-back with their arms locked together.  Another part of the act involved her dangling beneath the trapeze, and his feet under her shoulders were supporting her entire weight.

They also had a whole troop of acrobats using a springboard – one guy got on top of another guy’s shoulders, then they used the springboard to send another person somersaulting through the air to land on top of the second guy.  The third person varied – first it was a guy, then one of the women that did the silks, then the same boy from the acrobat and double trapeze act (clearly he’s pretty talented).  The woman from the silks also got springboard-ed onto a char on top of a very tall pole.

The final act was the flying trapeze – a whole group of people swinging off it to the catcher (a guy swinging on a metal frame on the opposite side of the ring), and then coming back.  I could see them powdering their hands and wiping sweat off their arms in-between their turns.  Finally, one of the guys did it blindfolded; they put a big hood over his head, and he swung to the catcher and them back again.  It was pretty spectacular.