A great day out
Today was the first full day together as a family. We only have two such days, since John will be back at work on Friday, so we decided to make the most of them.
We went to a nearby "safari park" for the best part of the day. Of course, John spent many years living right at one of the gates of the Kruger National Park and his family made many, many forays into the park, so he has seen wildlife aplenty in his lifetime. I spent some holidays in wildlife parks myself growing up, and my extended family is pretty "into" wildlife. For us, therefore, the Woburn Safari Park was somewhat like an (albeit enormous) upgrade on a zoo. However, we realise that this might be the closest our boys ever get to seeing animals in their natural habitat, so we decided to go for it.
It must be said that the owners/managers have gone to a lot of trouble to make sure that the animals are comfortable and happy. Also, they have not restricted themselves to the animals of any one continent, so we saw creatures that neither John nor I would have seen in the places we visited with our families, where they strive to keep a natural ecology going. The enclosures are enormous, so the animals aren't as caged as they would be in a zoo, but they are fed, so the predators don't exercise those
skills/muscles/instincts. We chose to focus on the positive, though, and were thrilled to see bears, tigers, wolves, camels, Indian elephant, wallabies, and many others besides. We took loads of pictures. We even saw a minor altercation between a pack of wolves and a bear. A few of the wolves were worrying the bear, who eventually lost it with them and swiped out at the ringleader. I swear you could amost hear the wolves snickering to themselves for managing to get the bear all riled up. In this picture, you see the start of the confrontation.
We also saw species of African animals neither of us had ever seen before. Many of the animals did seem smaller than the wild ones we've seen - especially the giraffes (who were the ones that broke my heart - of course the trees they eat don't thrive in the UK, so they have to eat out of buckets nailed to the sides of some other tree, from which all the branches had been sawn off).
In the visitors' centre, some of the animals were put through their paces for the public. We saw birds of prey, Indian elephants and sea lions. In this photo you see one of the birds put through its paces - as you can see, it was less than a metre from Björn's head, and it kept returning to that spot, missing him by inches as it passed. Perhaps it liked him!
We also went into the playground areas. I joined the boys sliding down a huge slide on doormat type things, and we all went around the adventure play area, including zip wires (foefie slides).
We went to a nearby "safari park" for the best part of the day. Of course, John spent many years living right at one of the gates of the Kruger National Park and his family made many, many forays into the park, so he has seen wildlife aplenty in his lifetime. I spent some holidays in wildlife parks myself growing up, and my extended family is pretty "into" wildlife. For us, therefore, the Woburn Safari Park was somewhat like an (albeit enormous) upgrade on a zoo. However, we realise that this might be the closest our boys ever get to seeing animals in their natural habitat, so we decided to go for it.
It must be said that the owners/managers have gone to a lot of trouble to make sure that the animals are comfortable and happy. Also, they have not restricted themselves to the animals of any one continent, so we saw creatures that neither John nor I would have seen in the places we visited with our families, where they strive to keep a natural ecology going. The enclosures are enormous, so the animals aren't as caged as they would be in a zoo, but they are fed, so the predators don't exercise those
skills/muscles/instincts. We chose to focus on the positive, though, and were thrilled to see bears, tigers, wolves, camels, Indian elephant, wallabies, and many others besides. We took loads of pictures. We even saw a minor altercation between a pack of wolves and a bear. A few of the wolves were worrying the bear, who eventually lost it with them and swiped out at the ringleader. I swear you could amost hear the wolves snickering to themselves for managing to get the bear all riled up. In this picture, you see the start of the confrontation.We also saw species of African animals neither of us had ever seen before. Many of the animals did seem smaller than the wild ones we've seen - especially the giraffes (who were the ones that broke my heart - of course the trees they eat don't thrive in the UK, so they have to eat out of buckets nailed to the sides of some other tree, from which all the branches had been sawn off).
In the visitors' centre, some of the animals were put through their paces for the public. We saw birds of prey, Indian elephants and sea lions. In this photo you see one of the birds put through its paces - as you can see, it was less than a metre from Björn's head, and it kept returning to that spot, missing him by inches as it passed. Perhaps it liked him!We also went into the playground areas. I joined the boys sliding down a huge slide on doormat type things, and we all went around the adventure play area, including zip wires (foefie slides).
posted by karynr at 8:05 pm
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