GOING WILD IN SAN DIEGO : PANDA-MONIUM, TAME SAFARI CAPTIVATE VISITORS TO ZOO, ANIMAL PARK.

Byline: Susanne Hopkins Daily News Travel Editor

Bai Yun was playing hide and seek.

The roly-poly giant panda sat camouflaged in a tree at the back of her San Diego Zoo compound. Periodically, she'd stretch out a fat black arm to snatch a few leaves off a neighboring bamboo tree for a tasty, midmorning snack. And occasionally, she'd flirt with us, turning her head coquettishly to reveal a charming black eye.

Whispers - panda viewers are asked to be as quiet as possible - rippled through the viewing lines. ``See her? She's back there in the tree. Move over this way - you can see her better!''

Seeing the pandas - it's the big deal these days in San Diego. The pair of rare black-and-white creatures - Bai Yun and her male counterpart, Shi Shi - are on a 12-year research loan from the People's Republic of China and are drawing record crowds. The zoo annually receives about 3.5 million visitors, a figure that has grown about 10 percent since the September arrival of Bai Yun and Shi Shi.

While they are very beguiling, there's more wildlife to see in these sunny parts than pandas. You could easily spend three days ferreting out the animals of the wild around the city. In addition to the zoo's 3,400 mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians, there's Sea World, that venerable repository of aquatic life that includes Shamu, the killer whale; and the San Diego Wild Animal Park, whose exotic inhabitants roam portions of 2,100 acres.

Time being short, I bypassed Sea World and took in the zoo and the wild animal park instead.

San Diego Zoo

The best way to get a handle on the zoo, it appeared to me, was to hop aboard the double-decker bus near the entrance and take a 40-minute ride around 70 percent of the grounds. And aside from the fact that I seemed always to be on the wrong side of the bus for the sights (take my advice - sit on the left) and the driver seemed always to park my part of the bus behind a tree when he stopped, thus impeding any efforts at picture-taking, it was a good way to figure out where certain animals resided and what exhibits I wanted to return to.

It's also a way to gain interesting tidbits of information - the zoo's version of Trivial Pursuit:

The reason the antelope, which can leap 25 feet in the air, don't jump over the low walls around their compound is that they can't see the road - and antelope don't leap if they can't see where they're going to land.

Giraffes can reach 16 feet tall; their long necks have the same number of vertabrae as humans: seven.

Camels can spit - with accuracy - 10 to 12 feet.

The jaws of a hyena are more powerful than those of a male African lion.

There are 100,000 muscles in an elephant's trunk. The beast can pick up a 2-ton log or a single blade of grass.

The bus meandered through lushly landscaped grounds - the zoo, with 6,800 forms of plant life, doubles as a botanical garden, the bus driver told us - and past meercats, Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep, elephants, monkeys and two North Chinese leopards, to name just a few creatures.

Once off the bus, I made a beeline for the panda exhibit, which sported no visible line when we drove by - a rare occurrence, by all accounts. In the viewing area, folks crowded into three lines. A zoo employee answered questions:

Where was the male panda, Shi Shi? Answer: in an exercise compound.

How old are the pandas? Answer: Bai Yun is 5, Shi Shi is thought to be between 11 and 15 years old.

How many pandas are left in the world? Answer: less than 1,000, three of which are in the United States (in addition to Bai Yun and Shi Shi, there is another panda at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C.).

Does Bai Yun always sit in the tree? Answer: Very often. She can spend hours up there.

I didn't ask how a 213-pound panda can balance for hours on a tree limb the circumference of a walking stick.

From there, my trek through the zoo took me through a re-creation of the Southeast Asia rain forest with its jet-propelled mist, a model of an African rain forest where gorillas lurked, and up and down steep grades as I sought out the tigers, polar bears, koalas, sea lions, hippos and monkeys.

(Make no mistake, a trip to this zoo requires some strenuous walking. You can cut some steps by using the shuttle bus, which allows you to hop on and off at stops all over the park; the Skyfari, an aerial tram that runs from the entrance to the rear of the zoo; or one of the moving sidewalks.)

``I've never seen a place where the animals look so healthy,'' a woman remarked to me as we took advantage of the moving sidewalk to transport us from a canyon to a mesa. The ride took us past two Sichuan takins (they look somewhat like goats with a horse's head and short horns) that were butting heads. ``Their coats are so shiny; they're fat,'' she noted.

It was true. While a lot of zoos have left me feeling quite sorry for the animals, this one did not. Their compounds seemed roomy, the animals well cared for.

San Diego Wild Animal Park

For those of us without several thousand extra dollars to spend, this place could, with a bit of imagination, be the next best thing to going on safari in Africa.

A half-hour north of San Diego, it sprawls over 2,100 acres that masquerade as Asian plains and African veldts and are populated with antelope, rhinos, giraffes, tigers, cheetahs, elephants, bison, zebras, and other exotic and endangered species.

Come into the nucleus of the park from the great outdoors and you enter a world of lush gardens, marshes and lagoons, as well as animal exhibits and amphitheaters where some of the creatures are featured in shows.

And, while the park doesn't have the very inviting buses, moving sidewalks and sky trams the zoo boasts, it does have a monorail tour through the outback. I hopped aboard the vehicle and soon found myself skirting the compound where Asian elephants tossed hay on their backs (their version of sunblock, we were told by the driver) lions snoozed in the sun, rhinos stood around looking like rocks, goiter gazelles and deer clustered under a lonely tree, and a water buffalo tried to pull lunch in the form of feed bags off the back of a truck.

Since the animals have free rein (barriers are mostly subtle - culverts, ponds and the like) in their area, there's no telling what visitors will see. Our monorail driver kept an eagle eye out for animals, many of which blended into the backdrop just as nature intended. Periodically, he'd point out a baby (one of the monkeys had given birth just that morning) or offer nuggets of information. The ultimate goal of the park, he noted, is ``to put these wild animals back in the wild.''

The park has been relatively successful at doing just that. The Arabian oryx has been returned to Saudia Arabia, Jordan, Oman and Israel, the addax (a desert-dwelling antelope) is back in Tunisia after a 103-year absence, and Przewalski's wild horse is in China, set to return to the wild, officials said. Also, California condors are regularly being returned to their native habitat.

The 50-minute tour over, I set off on foot to see the gorillas, where the obvious leader posed like a king surveying his subjects (a group of us standing outside the enclosure frantically trying to capture him on film).

``You wonder what he's thinking,'' remarked one woman, staring at the fierce countenance. As if on cue, the black beast slapped at a fly buzzing around his head; he missed. His face scrunched up even more.

``I think he's annoyed,'' I said.

Over at the Hidden Jungle, plants bloomed in profusion and butterflies spread their wings, casting a bit of colored magic on the day. At the new Petting Kraal, deer nudged visitors in hopes of getting a handout. Herons perched on rocks in a lagoon, a warthog snoozed in his shady compound and a pudu - the world's tiniest deer, a redwood-colored creature with gentle eyes - edged close to the fence before darting back to safety near a bush.

Nearby, I spotted what looked like a giant teardrop with a hole in the middle hanging from a tree, its cement exterior formed like entwined roots. It's meant to resemble a weaver bird's hanging nest. Smaller people than I are invited to crawl inside and pretend to be weaver birds.

I roamed the Nairobi village of restaurants and bazaars, but begged off the Kilimanjaro Trail. The 1-3/4-mile trail is a sometimes arduous walk that takes one past the rhinos, elephants and other animals, as well as through gardens of bonsai and fuchsia. Floating and suspended walkways are currently being constructed along the trail; they should be open by summer.

Finally, it was time to leave. I made my way to the exit just in time to overhear a woman say to her companion, ``It's beautiful in here.''

He grinned. ``I like going on the monorail,'' he said. ``It's like being in Africa. It's awesome.''

Indeed.

On Location

The San Diego Zoo is on Zoo Drive in Balboa Park. Visitors are admitted from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily, with the park closing at 6 p.m. Admission is $15 for adults, $6 for children age 3-11 and free for kids under 2. Admission and a bus tour are $19 for adults, $9 for children, while admission and the bus tour and ride on the tramway are $21 for adults, $11 for children. Bus tours in Spanish are also available at $4 for adults, $3 for children.

The Kangaroo bus tour, which allows visitors to hop on and off the bus throughout the zoo, is $8 for adults, $5 for children.

Information: [phone]. There's also a panda hotline for daily information on the pandas: [phone].

You can purchase a combination ticket to both the zoo and the wild animal park (must be used within five days). Cost is $28.50 for adults, $16 for children aged 3-11.

The San Diego Wild Animal Park is about 30 miles north of San Diego off Interstate 15. Take the Via Rancho Parkway exit and follow the signs to the park, six miles east. Hours are 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily; guests must be out of the park by 5 p.m. Information: [phone].

Admission, which includes the monorail tour and animal shows, is $18.95 adults, $11.95 children 3 to 11 and free for children 2 and under.

The park also periodically offers a photo caravan that takes visitors in an open truck into the heart of the animal habitats, where they can feed giraffes and shoot up-close photos. Information and reservations: [phone].

For youngsters, the park features a Roar and Snore Camping Safari that allows children to camp overnight on Fridays and Saturdays. Nature hikes, outdoor dining and a campfire experience are featured. Information: [phone].

CAPTION(S):

6 Photos, Box

Photo: (1--Color) Visitors to San Diego's Wild Animal Park take a monorail tour to see the animals. Animals of just about every variety can be viewed at the park or at the San Diego Zoo.

San Diego Wild Animal Park

(2--Color) No caption (Swan)

Susanne Hopkins/Daily News

(3--Color) No caption (Giraffe)

Susanne Hopkins/Daily News

(4--Color) No caption (Polar bear)

San Diego Zoo

(5--Color) No caption (Panda bear)

PRN Photo

(6) The king of the gorillas holds court in his San Diego Wild Animal Park compound.

Susanne Hopkins/Daily News

Box: On Location (See text)